The Four
by x-LiveFantasy-x
Summary: After artistic Cassia falls through a painting, she finds herself in a world of tricks and horrors. Using her skills, cunning ways, and strength she doesn't even know she has, she scrambles to get through this obscure gallery and save her friends with help from the mysterious Belle. Meanwhile, Ib and Garry struggle to save one of Ib's friends and kill the gallery's spirit for good.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello fanfictioners! This is my first fiction about a video game and this is probably one of the most creative plots in a computer game I've ever seen. Although Ib and Garry won't be appearing in this much, I hope you'll appreciate my new characters just as much. Also, I'd like to make it clear that in this fiction, Garry and Ib will NOT be an item. Seriously, people. She's like nine and he's like sixteen or seventeen. Come on.**

**This is rated T because of minor violence, scary scenes, and the general obscurity that comes with writing a fiction about Ib. Oh, and some romance, but the most severe intimacy would be kissing. **

**So anyway, R&R. Tell your friends. Blah blah blah all that jazz. Now here's Chapter 1. Enjoy!**

Cassia Kensington loved art more than anything, which is why when her boarding school principal announced that they were taking a school-wide trip to the Capital Art Museum in the city, she was over the moon.

She pulled on her casual clothes. She only had one pair because she usually wore an atrocious uniform on school days. Her blonde hair fell in waves down her shoulders and it felt good because usually it was pulled into slick bun (according to uniform). She pulled on a red tank top and jeans and laced up some running shoes. She was going to wear her flats, but who knew how long she'd have to walk for? She shrugged on a jacket to ward off the chilly fall air and grabbed her tote bag that contained all her sketching tools.

_This is going to be great! _She thought as she opened the door and practically ran down the hall. There, she joined her classmates, who were bundling into groups by last name in the main foyer. She milled around, feeling more awkward than usual. She didn't make many friends at this school because she was too busy being ridiculed. It didn't help that she got perks here she didn't even want because her parents were serious sponsors.

They piled into the busses and, like usual, she was alone. She liked it that way; no distractions, no fuss. She filled the other space with her bag and took out her notebook. She took out an ebony pencil and as the bus jolted to a start, she began to draw.

It took a while to reach the museum because it was in the city and the school as in the countryside, which wasn't a problem; it gave Cassia plenty of time to complete her drawing. She had a thing for flowers, and her favorite was the rose. The intricacy of it intrigued her, and the delicateness of the petals was hard to capture in drawings and provided a formidable challenge for her. She liked a challenge.

When the gallery came into view, her masterpiece was complete. She managed to snag some red pencils from the art room and made a blooming red rose. She'd also done a few rough sketches of lilies, but they didn't compare. She was proud of herself.

She closed her notebook and put it back into her bag as she got up. She walked down the aisle of the bus, bumping into the people around her as she got off the bus. They all regrouped as they went through the doors.

As soon as she stepped foot in the gallery, she knew she was in love. She was the first one to begin to browse as soon as she got her student armband from the lady at the reception desk. She ran off immediately in glee to the abstract section. _Screw the group, _she thought as she sat down next to a Pecolini piece and began to sketch.

The sun was getting low in the sky as she wandered into the sculpture area. She meandered through the different artists and different pieces until she came to the middle of the area. There were only two or three people in the room, so the silence was blissful.

In the center of the area there was a large stone fountain. It was ornately sculpted and carved beautifully. Benches dotted the area around it, but despite that, someone was sitting on the fountain's edge. She began to sketch the fountain intently, and found that she was sketching the person as well. She had a thing about capturing the entire scene. She was in the middle of the sketch and hadn't looked up in about five minutes, drawing by memory, when someone next to her said, "Are you drawing me?"

She looked up with a start and saw that the person from the fountain had disappeared and someone had joined her on the bench. She looked to her left and saw that a guy was looking at her work. He had slightly longer dark hair and strange light violet eyes. His skin was paler then hers, but not deathly pale. He wore a long black jacket, dark jeans, and underneath the jacket he was wearing a dark shirt that had a purple pattern on it that looked like a giant purple monster slashed him across his front.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "If it bothers you, I can scrap it –"

"No!" he said quickly. "I mean, its okay. You're really good. I'd hate to see it go to waste."

"I was just trying to sketch the fountain, but," she smiled a little. "you managed to find your way into my drawing anyway. Are you here alone?"

"Yeah. My parents dropped me off here because they needed to go do something in the city," he said.

"I'm here with my school," she said. Then something she thought of made her jolt. "My school! My group! I have to go and find them!" She gathered her supplies, stuffed then hastily into her bag, and said to the boy, "I'm sorry we couldn't talk more. I'll see you around, hopefully!"

As she darted away, the boy smiled and went back into the gallery.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Duo whilst watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. **

**R&R, please!**

Cassia flew through the gallery, but all of a sudden nothing looked the same._ Ugh! Of course I went and got myself lost! _She thought angrily as she speed walked through the Cafouré exhibit. What had the principal said about what to do when lost? Was it to meet in the Asian Primitive Art section or the Italian Sculptures exhibit? _Why can't I ever remember anything when it's important?_

Soon, she had to stop, panting, and realized that she had stopped in front of a huge, wall-long painting. It was very abstract, with many colorful splatters and lines. It was charred at the edges and in some middle places, though, which nearly ruined the entire viewing experience. She went to the plaque and began to read it:

_Guertena's__Whimsy__World_

_This painting was salvaged from the fire that burned down the Guertena Gallery_

_It was the only thing saved when the workers rummaged through the ruins of the old building_

_Central Art Museum was built on top of it therefore this is symbolic of the galleries' similarities _

She looked closely at it and saw that there were no security sensors on it or anything. She thought that if this painting was so important like they said, they would protect it better. Or maybe they thought no one would want to steal a half burned painting from a dead gallery. She looked closer and saw that the canvas was very, very thin, almost translucent. It could never withstand the weight of all the paint covering it.

She looked around making sure no one was able to see her. She cautiously took a step forward, as if compelled by some unknown force. She reached out, and touched the thin paper surface of the painting.

The lights began to flicker and she stepped swiftly back from the painting. The lights flickered once again, and suddenly the entire galley's lights went black.

Cassia groped around for something to hang onto, and as she stumbled backwards she felt thin paper on her skin. With a delicate _r-r-iii-ii-ip, _she fell down.

The lights soon flickered back on, but something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Underneath of her, she was sitting on the thin paper of the painting. She had fallen… through? Through the painting? Yes. She had. For a moment, she was mortified as she stood up and looked down at the sheet of torn paper she had been sprawled on. To her surprise, the shard was blank. She picked it up and turned it over, but that side was blank too. She turned around, and the painting in front of her was unscathed. But something was strange. If she had fallen through the painting, she would have hit a wall. Now, though, it seemed like she had fallen through a two-sided painting with no wall in the middle.

_This is too weird, _Cassia thought as she turned around.

There were no people as she walked down the hall. _I just fell through a painting, _she thought. _Shouldn't security come running? _She ran around the corner, but that side of the gallery too was deserted. She was beginning to get scared, so she gripped her bag tightly and ran again back up the hall and down the set of large marble stairs into the tapestry section.

She had remembered studying a tapestry depiction of Julius Caesar and another of the goddess Minerva earlier in this same section, but those were both replaced by new works, but these were different. One depicted a roaring lion that shot bees from its gullet and the other depicted a table with bread and wine set out. She skipped the last few steps on her way down and ran up to the plaque on the bread and wine tapestry. She read:

_Guertena's__Pumpernickel__and__Sauvignon_

But under the title, instead of a description of its symbolism or its time period, it had a few words that seemed to be scrawled out in scratched handwriting:

_You fell through._

_What to do? What to do?_

Her heart nearly stopped in her chest, and just as she was about to ponder the question, she heard footsteps coming from behind her. She froze as the slow steps came closer. Suddenly, the steps stopped, and turned around.

_Was that there before? _She thought as she rubbed her eyes in disbelief.

In the center of the large room was a figure, almost humanlike in structure. She couldn't see it well, but the moonlight that shined through the skylight at the stop of the steep walls of the room showed that it was a sculpture of a person that had no head.

It took a step forward, then another. Cassia was sure she was hallucinating when the arms began to move as well and it was clear that the statue was heading straight for Cassia. She backed up a few paces, then turned and ran for the door. She hit it hard and jiggled the doorknob, but it wouldn't open. She looked out and saw that the statue was getting closer, and in a split second decision fled in the other direction. Cassia was the best runner in her class, which came in handy when the statue kicked its speed up a notch and began briskly walking.

She darted to the other door and to her surprise it actually opened. She slammed the door shut behind her and braced her shoulder up against the cold wood. She could hear it banging over the sound of her racing heart and the roar of blood in her ears as she stepped back and the banging ceased. Apparently that thing wasn't smart enough to open doors. _Duh, _she thought. _It doesn't even have a head._

She turned around and saw that the room she had entered had one lone table in the center. On top of it sat an ornate vase filled with crystal clear water. Inside the vase was the most beautiful blooming rose Cassia had ever seen. It looked well and healthy, practically glowing. It was a rich red color, like the color of her shirt, and it seemed to glow a bit brighter as she approached. Slowly, she reached out, and plucked the rose from the vase. It had thorns, but she couldn't feel them as she ran her fingers down the stem. She felt a strange connection to it, and curiously, she pinched a petal and plucked it off. She almost dropped the rose in surprise when she felt a searing pinch in her own side. She let the petal fall to the floor and discovered that she had six petals left. The rose lost a bit of its luster and seemed a little less red. Curiously, she replaced it in the vase, and it glowed instantly. The petal grew back before her very eyes and as she plucked it back out, she felt her own strength replenishing.

_I better keep this in a safe place, _she thought. She opened the flap of her bag and put it in a pocket, protected from anything that could damage it. She looked up and saw that there was another door, leading away from the walking statue. _Away is good, _she thought again as she opened the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**Three chapters in a row. I believe this is a record for me.**

**R&R!**

It turned out that away was worse.

She stepped out of the room and immediately came face to face with a very disturbing painting of a man being flayed alive by a lizard with formidable claws. Cassia hated guts and gore, so it took all her strength to go up to the plaque and read it:

_Guertena's Komodo Vanquish _

Underneath, in the same scratched letters, spelled:

_NOT ALONE_

_NOT ALONE_

_DISCOVER THEM ALL_

_IF YOU WANT TO GO HOME_

What did she have to discover? She went along the hall and there were some pretty useless painting's on the walls, all done by Guertana: The Goose, The Mantle, The Yelp, even Fall Straight which depicted a man committing suicide by falling off a building. It seemed like this man Guertena was very bipolar when it came to what he drew. It was either happy animals or gruesome death and blood. After close examination, she discovered that Guertana depicted the more severe paintings later in his life as opposed to earlier in his career._ What could have happened to make him want to paint this? _She thought as she came to the end of the hall. The large painting that blocked her way was called Glaiciabelle and depicted a little girl sitting in the snow with her eyes closed and her arms tightly wrapped around her like she couldn't get warm. Her hair was blonde, her eyes blue, and she looked around nine or ten.

_This painting is beautiful, _she thought with an artist's curiosity. She went up to the plaque that said _Guertena's Glaiciabelle _and looked at the words etched at the bottom:

_I'LL HELP YOU ALONG_

_TO SETTLE MY SCORES_

_MY NAME IS BELLE_

_WHAT IS YOUR'S?_

Something was weird, though. This handwriting was neater than the first ones, kind of curvy at the ends of some letters, like a child who really knew what they were doing. It seemed less evil and more prophetic.

At the bottom of the words, there was a poorly etched straight line. Cassia looked around for something sharp and found a jagged rock in the corner of the hall. She picked it up, brought it over to the plaque, and did the best she could to etch her name onto the line. _Cassia, _it said when she was finished.

Before her eyes, the words began to warp, letters switching and disappearing all together, until cassia was left with this:

_CASSIA YOU SAY?_

_THAT'S QUITE DIVINE_

_NOW I WILL GIVE YOU_

_SOMETHING OF MINE_

Suddenly, the painting began to ripple, and something fell out. Cassia picked it up off the floor and saw that it was a little glass snowflake pendant on a delicate silver chain. The letters changed again, and this time, two passages showed up side by side on the plaque. The first said:

_NOW THAT WE'RE FRIENDS_

_YOU CAN HAVE MY SNOWFLAKE _

_SHE WANTS IT REAL BAD_

_PLEASE DON'T LET IT BREAK_

The second one, next to the first, said:

_I KNOW YOU'LL BE CAREFUL_

_YOU'LL KEEP IT REAL SAFE_

_RIGHT 'ROUND YOUR NECK_

_WOULD BE THE BEST PLACE_

Cautiously, Cassia slipped the chain over her neck. The pendant fell to just above the neckline of her shirt and rested there securely. The pendant glowed when she took her hand away, and she felt very calm and confident.

"Thank you," She said aloud. The letters suddenly shifted again, and now they said:

_WE'LL PLAY A BIT LATER_

_AND I'LL HELP YOU GET THROUGH_

_BUT FIRST YOU MUST FIND_

_THE GOLD, PURPLE, AND BLUE_

The letters stayed like that and didn't move, and that's when the painting suddenly slid aside. Behind it was a long tunnel that led into darkness. Cassia swallowed once, shook her head, and plunged into the black.


	4. Chapter 4

**Seriously, I'm on a seriously serious streak. I don't think I've ever written more than three chapters of a fanfiction in a day. Maybe I AM cut out for this! This is where we start introducing new characters. This is a personal favorite of mine.**

**R&R PLEASE! I will commemorate the first review.**

She ran down the passage, careful to stick to the walls in case something popped out. The hatch closed behind her and she was running in darkness for a moment. She touched the snowflake for comfort, and it illuminated under her fingers. The hall was bathed in a light blue light and she could see that as she ran down the hall, shadowy arms stuck out on the edges, grabbing at her ankles. She thought that as long as she stuck to the center, they wouldn't get her, but they were still very creepy. They had long, black fingernails that clawed on the wood floor as she ran down.

At this point, she was genuinely terrified. This was way too creepy and real to be a dream. She reached the end of the hall, where another door stood. She jiggled it, but it was locked. _Oh great, _she thought._ What now?_

She turned back around and saw that the hands had stopped clawing and were now stiff. They were stuck in a position that made them look like they were supposed to be holding something, but weren't. Then, something struck her: _Maybe one of them has a key!_

She ran back down the hall, using the light of Belle's snowflake, and searched for a gleam of any kind. As she got halfway back down, she saw that one of the hands had the key looped in its finger, resting on its palm. She hesitated at first, but then slowly reached out towards the hand. She closed her fingers on the key and slowly, ever so slowly, lifted it up off the finger. She had nearly gotten it off when the hand suddenly reanimated and lashed out, grabbing her wrist. She shrieked and almost dropped the key, but at the last second had the sense to hold on. She tugged, but the hand tugged back, and when she jerked her hand free the rest of the hands came back to life.

She raced back towards the center of the hall, but one of them grabbed her ankle. Her legs flew out from under her and began to drag her backwards. She clawed at the floor and flailed her foot, but nothing broke its iron grasp. Before it could drag her under the floor, though, she kicked it with her free foot and scooted backwards to the center. She hugged her knees and sat there, her breath coming in quick, shallow gulps. Her ankle was bleeding, with scratches spiraling up it to the middle of her shin. It clawed her despite her jeans and her wrist was dotted with bloody claw marks too.

She hugged her legs tighter and put her chin on her knees, closing her eyes. _Pull it together Cassia, _she thought, blowing her shiny blonde hair out of her eyes. _Get to that door._

She bolted up and ran down the hall, avoiding the hands at all costs. She came up to the door and jammed the key into the lock, turned it swiftly and pushed it open. She closed it behind her and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

_That was insane, _she thought as she turned around and faced whatever obstacle lied before her. To her surprise, it was just a large white-walled gallery with paintings and several doors. She locked the door behind her and left the key.

She stepped out and looked around. There were more strange, small paintings, like Revere and Moreover. There was one of just grapes, and a few fell out of the portrait as she was looking at. She picked them up off the ground, and her stomach growled. She popped them into her mouth and realized how hungry she was. She opened her bag and took out the rose. It was missing four petals and was looking more like a dusty magenta. She shook her head and put the rose back.

Suddenly, she heard loud, running footsteps. Her first thought was: _Oh God, the statues can run now. _She backed up as something burst through the door, but it definitely was NOT a statue.

"Aaaiiiieeee!" A little voice cried from the figure that flew through the door. It was a little girl who couldn't be older than six or seven. She pushed the door closed and panted, tears streaking down her face. She slid down the door and covered her face with her hands.

"Oh God," Cassia said, rushing over to her. "Are you okay?" The girl answered her with another wail and Cassia gathered her up in a hug. "Shh, it's okay. It's okay."

"They're coming!" She cried, burying her face in Cassia's shirt. She had shoulder length blonde hair that curled at the end and green eyes. Her hair was held back in bows and she was wearing a spring green dress with yellow trim. "Lock the door! Please!"

Cassia pulled her away from the door when the banging started and bolted over to retrieve the key. She yanked it from the door just as the knob was turning. The door began to open and Cassia shoved herself against it as the little girl shrieked, shrinking into a corner far away from it all. She forced the key into the lock and turned it, falling back from it. She went back over to the girl and hugged her to her hip until the banging stopped and the creaking ceased.

Cassia looked at the little girl and said, "They're gone. It's okay."

"You sure?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Cassia said. "What's your name?"

"Holly," she replied. "I'm seven. How old are you?"

"Fifteen," Cassia said. "My name is Cassia. How did you get here?"

"The lights went out, and I ended up here with…" Tears sprang into her eyes again and she wailed. "Toby! Where's my brother? Where is he?"

"You came here with your brother?" Cassia asked.

"I can't find him!" she cried. "We went up to a weird painting, and when we touched it, all these m-m-monsters came and… and…"

"Shh, it's okay," Cassia petted her hair. "How long ago was that?"

"A few minutes. I was running from them," Her voice was getting steadier, but it became quieter when she said, "He told me to go."

"We'll find him, Holly," Cassia said. "Let's just stick together, okay? We'll do this together."

"There was a painting," she said. "Of a girl. She told me to find the girl with her snowflake." Her eyes fell to the hollow of cassia's throat where the pendant lay and said, "Are you the girl I'm supposed to be looking for?"

_She met Belle? _Cassia thought. "Yeah. I think I am."

"She says I can trust you," she said.

"Holly, do you have a rose?" Cassia opened her bag and pulled out her red rose. "Like this one?"

"Yeah, I do," Cassia hadn't even realized it, but Holly was holding it the whole time. It was a lustrous golden color and shimmered in the light.

_But first you must find the Gold, Purple and Blue…_

"Did your brother have one too?"

"Yeah, he did too," she said.

"And was it blue?"

Her face lit up. "Yes! It was beautiful! My second favorite color is blue. I like it very much. Do you know him? Do you know where he is?"

"No," Cassia said. "But we will soon."


	5. Chapter 5

**This is the first alternate POV I'm doing, and it won't be the last. This is three POV's, just in case some people get confused, and one is FINALLY a recurring character from Ib! Who, though? Hope you liked the last chapter, because I did. I love writing for Holly, she's just so darn cute! But how long will the cuteness last when faced with the terrors in the gallery? This chapter also includes the first of many choices that will get a good or bad ending in the end. Will their decisions be correct? **

**Oh, and thanks a whole lot to Ami Izune for being the first reviewer! (I couldn't put in the whole name because the site wouldn't let me.) Your gift will be a goblin to be your personal slave, as soon as I can gather up enough stamps to send him.**

**Keep Rating and Reviewing!**

Toby ran as fast as he could, but his muscles ached and his brain wasn't functioning right. His breath barely escaped his lungs and barely entered. The statues were faster than he thought. The yellow ones were quickest. Or was it the red ones? He couldn't tell, and he didn't care. Soon, he found a door, and he bashed through it. He shoved it closed behind him and stumbled forwards.

_I can't… Can't hang on… _Toby's world rocked under his feet and he slid to the ground, his knees banging to the floor. He watched in terror as the last blue petal of his rose fell withered to the ground. _Holly got away… Good… She's safe… She's…_

His vision flickered, and the world swam with black.

_Safe…_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cassia went over to the second door for the millionth time and jiggled the locked knob. She'd done and repeated that action for two minutes straight. "Ugh! There has to be a way out of here!"

"We can't go through that one," Holly pointed to the first door. "That one might still have monsters behind it."

"Well we have to try," Cassia said. She went up to the door and braced her shoulder against it. She pulled Holly behind her and said, "On three."

Holly nodded, a terrified look on her face. "One..."

"Two…"

"Three!" They said together, and Cassia yanked the door open.

They waited a few seconds behind the door, and nothing happened. Holly opened up her eyes and went out from behind Cassia. She looked out and said with a tiny smile, "Clear!" Cassia let out a sigh of relief and went out. In front of them was another hall.

Cassia was about to step out, when looked down and shrieked, pulling Cassia back. Cassia opened her mouth to ask her what was wrong, when she too looked down and her words caught in her throat. At their feet was a porcelain mannequin head, and it was crying red paint. Its eyes were beady and fixated on them, and Holly moved closer to Cassia.

Written across its face in red paint were words. Cassia looked closer and saw that they read, in dripping letters:

_I'm in your way_

_Smash me?_

_Move me away?_

Cassia moved forward and was about to smash it, when Holly held her back and said, "Wait!" She looked up at Cassia and continued, "I think this is some kind of test."

"So what do you think we should do?" Cassia contemplated stepping over it, but then she thought, _what if it comes to life? _"I think we should smash it."

Holly wasn't listening, though. She had gone forward, and before Cassia could stop her, she pushed the head aside and the red paint vanished from its eyes and face.

"I hope that was the right decision," Cassia said as they moved on ahead.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

She's missing. She's missing, and so is her rose.

Ib frantically picked up the phone and dialed Holly's house, but she didn't pick up. She nervously glanced over to her empty vase and listened as the phone rang forever, then repeated to her for the thousandth time, "Hi, you've reached Marcie, Toby, and Holly Markham. Leave a message!" She slammed the phone down and rushed over to her vase.

_How could this happen? How could I lose it? _Ib turned around, panicked, and picked up a picture of her and Holly on the first day of school that year. After the ordeal in the gallery, Holly and her had become close to best friends and was like a sister to her after she lost her parents and moved in with Garry, who was like a brother to her.

Garry was out, which made Ib more terrified. Was his rose gone too? If he was out when it happened, and someone came up behind him… Ib didn't want to think about that.

It had been nearly a year after the scarring adventure through the maze of the gallery. A year after Garry almost couldn't remember her. A year after her parents vanished. She thought she would never have to even set foot in that gallery again.

She dialed Garry's cell phone, which he'd gotten after he became her legal guardian. He was only sixteen, but he lied about his age on almost every occasion. The phone rang for a painstaking minute, then shot straight to voicemail. "Hey. You've reached Garry. Leave a message."

She almost cried, she was so worried. She was only eleven, and already she saw her life flashing before her eyes. How did this happen? She was sure she'd left it in the vase, where it always was, but when she woke up that morning to water it like she did every day, it was simply… gone. Vanished. Nonexistent.

Suddenly, her house phone rang and she scrambled to pick up the phone. It was Garry! Finally!

"Ib?" He sounded worried. "Ib? What's wrong?"

"Oh Garry!" she sobbed. "My rose is gone! It's gone, and I think Holly is in trouble!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Okay, I seriously think I have a problem. Six chapters in two days? Well, that's what you get when you have a bored writer home alone with her cat and her sister with nothing to do all week… ACK! CAT ON KEYBOARD! MAYDAY! Oh wait, never mind. She went to go sleep in a corner. It's all good. I try to update as fast as possible, but for those of you who have read my other fanfictions, I can take up to three months in between all my activities like school, dance classes, writing my own novels, and attempting to be the first founder of the New Jersey chapter of camp Half Blood.**

**You rate and review, yes? Good. I will go get sherbet now.**

Cassia and Holly ran down the hall, pictures flying by them as they went. The room was dimly lit by bulbs with burnt tops and sides screwed into the wall with no frames or lamps and the glow was eerie in the crevices of the cracks in the walls. She longed for the bright light of Belle's necklace, but it stayed dimmed. Holly looked less scared now, and more determined. She must have really loved her brother to face terrors at such a young age to save him. She reminded Cassia of herself when she was young because she had to take care of herself more than other kids because her parents were always gone. She wondered if something happened in her childhood to make Holly as strong as she was.

"So, your brother," Cassia said while they hurried along. "What does he look like?"

"He has brown hair the color of chocolate and dark blue eyes," she said. "He has glasses, but she doesn't wear them too much and keeps them in his pocket."

"What was he last wearing?"

"He had on a blue gaming t-shirt. I think it's called 'Minecraft'," she said. "He had a jacket, but he lost it when we first started. His thirteenth birthday was yesterday, and that's why we came here; he loves art history."

"Okay," Cassia said. Now she knew what to look for.

"We have to save him," Holly said, looking at Cassia somberly. She made it very clear to her that the task at hand was incredibly dire. "I can't lose someone else. Not after I lost my daddy."

_She lost her father? _Cassia thought with a jolt. She stopped Holly and crouched down so that they were the same height. "It's okay, Holly. My parents are never around either. I know how you feel."

"Thanks," she said. "But we have to keep going. Toby's out there."

"Right," Cassia said.

Before they began going down the seemingly endless hall again, though, Holly grabbed Cassia's shirt. "Cassia?"

"Yeah Holly?"

Her eyes were brimming with tear when she said, "I'm scared."

"Don't worry," Cassia said with an encouraging smile. "We'll get out of here. Now come on. I think I see a door."

They didn't have to go far before they hit another door. This one was unlocked, so Holly turned the knob and pushed it open. They stepped into the room, and there were two staircases stretching down in front of them. The left side had blue tinted lights, the right side red tinted lights. There was a little drip of some kind of liquid on the wall, and without thinking Cassia went up to it and ran her hand over it. _It's paint, _she thought. _Just like everything else in this damn place. _As soon as she removed her hand, there was a loud sucking sound, like somebody stamping something over and over again. She backed up and saw that all over the wall in red, oozing paint, were mismatched letters in different sizes that somehow created one word:

_CHOOSE_

"Cassia," Holly pointed at their feet. "The floor!"

Cassia's eyes trailed down the painted wall and onto the floor they stood on and saw that in more letters, colorful and varied this time, were splayed across the floor in the same spaced stamp style as was on the wall.

_BLUE IS WHAT YOU NEED_

_RED IS WHERE YOU WANT TO GO_

"It kind of contradicts itself," Cassia said.

"What does that mean?" Holly asked.

"It means that they both can mean the same thing," Cassia explained. "If what we need is where we need to go, we go left. If where we want to go is what we need, we go right. But one could be a trap."

"Cassia, what's that over there?" Holly pointed to a corner of the room, and to Cassia's shock there was something she didn't notice before.

Wedged in the corner was a small wooden desk. On top of it was an open book and next to it was a quill. They went over to it and saw that there was something scratched into the desk. It didn't look like the creepy writing Cassia saw when she first came in, and it didn't look like Belle's writing either. It looked like something that was supposed to be on the desk, like it was stamped by a machine. They were neat, organized letters, and they said:

_THE PAGES HERE WILL KEEP YOUR NAME_

_SHOULD YOU PERISH YOUR ROSE CAN BE RECLAIMED_

_IF YOU LEAVE A PETAL YOU CAN BE REVIVED_

_AND IT WOULD BE LIKE YOU NEVER DIED_

"So, if we leave a petal next to our name…"

"And we," Holly squeaked, "die."

"We can come back here to claim our last petal which could revive our rose," Cassia said.

She removed her rose from her bad and Holly took hers from her dress pocket, and they each plucked a petal off. Cassia felt the familiar searing pain in her side and Holly winced as well. Cassia went first and took the quill from the ink vial. She tapped off the excess ink and wrote in her tight, swooping handwriting, _Cassia Kensington. _Holly went after her and wrote in straight, scholastic, uniform letters, _Holly Markham. _Cassia placed her rose petal next to her name and so did Holly, and the pages glowed briefly before it died down and Cassia closed the book on top of them. She noticed that Holly only had five petals on her rose instead of seven like Cassia.

"So," Cassia said, turning back to the stairs. "Which staircase?"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Ib!" Garry gathered her up in a tight hug as Ib cried against him. After she's called him and told him everything, he rushed home to her. He couldn't drive fast because he'd just gotten his license and if he did he would probably kill a few people. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry, Ib."

"Why are you sorry?" she sniffed. "It wasn't your fault."

"When was the last time you talked to Holly?"

"Yesterday," Ib said, wiping her eyes. This was no time for tears. "She said her brother wanted to go to the Central Art Gallery. He loves art history so much and he wanted to go for his birthday."

"Have you ever met her brother?"

"No," she said. "He was always out when I went over her house. She usually comes here because it's on our way home from school. I tried to tell her not to go, but she didn't listen! That museum is built right over top of the Guertena Gallery, but I couldn't tell her about what happened there! She would've thought I'd lost my mind! I've never even told a soul about the time we spent in there and don't plan to."

"_We_ know that it's real. _We _know, and that's what matters," He said, his voice as calming now as it was a year ago when she met him in the gallery. It was also nice to know, though, that he was just as scared as she was most of the time. His brief flashes of cowardice were actually quite endearing and made him seem human. He stood up, grabbed his favorite coat, and took Ib's hand. He gave her the red cardigan she usually wore and said, "Put this on. We're going to the gallery."

"_WHAT?" _Ib cried. "You didn't LOOK insane when you woke up this morning."

"Do you want to get Holly back or not?" Garry asked, his eyebrows lifting.

"That's a rhetorical question," Ib muttered irritably as she snatched her cardigan out of his hand and pulled it on, throwing the door open.

As she walked out and opened the car door, Garry couldn't help but contrast the old Ib with the new Ib. The experience opened her up to her own mind. She's now not restricted by her conservative parents and she's developing into the outspoken girl she can now be. When he met her as a ten year old, scared, quiet girl, he had no idea how cunning she was and how much talent had been smothered by fear. Garry doesn't grieve for her parents' loss, but Ib sure does.

This would be one of her biggest obstacles yet, but this time, Garry wouldn't leave his adoptive sister's side.


	7. Chapter 7

**I am now dubbing my streak of writing the Write-A-Thon. I'm on a serious roll, and I'm not stopping yet! I am disappointed with the choices they made on the Glee Project finale. But it is what it is. Oh, and when you're reviewing, if you have any questions just ask! I will not give any spoilers, though. You'll just have to stick with it 'till the end to find out what happens.**

**RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEVVV VVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW! If you don't, then… well, I'll sort that out later.**

**Thanks!**

"What do you mean, you've 'never heard of any Holly'?" Garry protested to the man at the front desk of the Central art Gallery. "She's here with her mother and her brother. The Markhams?"

They had driven from their apartment in the city straight to the gallery. Garry was seriously convinced that if there was any traffic, Ib would start smashing some heads together. She's very protective of what she has left, and if something happens to Holly, it'd crush her. But as soon as they set foot in the gallery, even though the building was different, the art was different, and the entire feel of the place was different, she shrank back into her shell and took Garry's hand for support.

Garry had asked about the Markhams, but the front desk man didn't even have them in his records. "If they had been here, we would have recorded their ticket purchases and their names in the datebook for that day. I'm sorry. Would you like to go and look for them?"

"Yes, we'd like that," Garry nodded.

"Okay. Just take these passes. They only work for a half hour, so don't take too long," he said.

Garry and Ib went through to the gallery. They were close to where the portal painting used to be, when they came to a different painting. Ib groaned and said, "This place is so much different then Guertena Gallery."

"All right, come on," Garry said, tugging her along. "Let's find that painting."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"I think I know what this means," Cassia said.

They had sat pondering the meaning of the message for about five minutes, making small talk only about the task. Holly had this funny look when she concentrated. She would turn to the wall, stare intently at it, and scrunch her face up a little, knitting her eyebrows. It was probably the cutest thing Cassia had ever seen, but that wasn't the time for gawking at anything adorable.

"Please share," Holly leaned on her hand, her elbow resting on her knee.

"I think Toby is on the left side," she said.

"Okay," Holly said, getting up. Her dress twirled around her as she headed towards the stairs. "Then let's go!"

"Wait!" Cassia rushed over and grabbed her by the middle and carried her back into the center of the room. She held her by the shoulders and said, "I don't think that is the way we're supposed to go."

"What?" said Holly. "We have to go get him! He's probably hurt, or worse! I can't go on without knowing that he's okay!"

"Holly, listen," Cassia said. "Believe me, I thought this over a whole lot. It says that 'Blue is what we need'. We need to find Toby, so we would take the blue staircase._ But _the red one is where we need to go. That one probably leads to where we need to go to get out, if not the exit."

"But… Toby…" she sobbed.

"It could be a trap," Cassia said. "We have to keep moving. Toby will hold on. He has to."

Holly was silent for a second, her fist clenched over her heart. She shook her head no, but her lips formed the words, "Okay."

Cassia took her hand, unrolled her fist, and led Holly up the stairs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"You two looking for something?" A voice said behind Garry and Ib.

They both turned around and saw that approaching them was a boy with messy black hair and light violet eyes, nearly the color of Garry's hair (only a smidge darker). He looked about fifteen, but he was almost as tall as Garry. Security? No. Art enthusiast? Maybe. Garry wouldn't take any chances, so he leaned down and whispered to Ib, "I'll do the talking, okay?"

She nodded as the boy reached them. He said, "You two look kind of lost."

"Yeah, we're looking for a girl or maybe her brother and mother," Garry said. "The girl is almost eight, with shoulder length blonde hair and green eyes."

"I don't know about her," he said. "But I'm looking for a girl myself."

"Really?" Garry lifted an eyebrow. He gave a side glance to Ib, who nodded to him. He asked, "What's her name?"

"I have no idea, but I saw her run this way, saying something about needing to rejoin her group at school," he said. "I wanted to see her again, so I went to find her when the lights blacked out and everyone started freaking out. When they came back on, I felt weird, like I _really _needed to find her now."

Garry and Ib exchanged glances again before Garry said, "Go on."

"So I got to one of her teachers and described her. Wavy blonde hair, fifteen-ish. She was wearing a red tank top, dark jacket, skinny jeans. Had a bag and sketchbook with her. She has eyes that are kind of red like hers," He pointed to Ib. "And the lady says she's never had a student like that. That school is the only one here today. She _had _to be with them."

"Does this gallery have a painting called _Abyss of the Deep?" _Garry asked. Ib tensed, but he squeezed her hand.

"I'm not sure, but if you were to find it, you'd look by artist," he said. "I could show you, if you want. What are your names?"

"I'm Garry and this is Ib," he said. "And you?"

"Adrian," he said.

"All right, Adrian," Garry said. "We're looking for the artist Guertena."

"Well, I come to this gallery a lot, and I only know of one work by Guertena that was saved from the fire when the Guertena Gallery burned down," He led them down a hallway and through another corridor. Garry almost passed out when he saw what painting Adrian had brought them to.

The plaque said _Whimsy World, _but Garry knew it better as _Fabricated World. _In the real world, it was merely a picture, but in the other world, it was their only way back. Their only access point to the real world through the fabricated one. Ib's parents were lost in there, even though they were supposed to come out. Garry and Ib still don't know what they're still doing there.

"I didn't think you could go in through here," Garry whispered to himself.

"Go where? It's a painting," Adrian said.

"We need to get back to Guertena Gallery," said Garry. "Holly and Toby have to be in there. It explains why no one knows that they even exist. If they don't survive, then the world will have forgotten them."

"What happened to Marcie?" Ib referred to Holly and Toby's mother. "She was here with them."

"It is likely that the same thing happened to her that happened to your parents, Ib," Garry said.

"Garry," Ib said nervously. "Is this Mary's doing?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"Adrian said. "Are you crazy? Am I being punked or something?"

"What should we do?" Ib said, ignoring Adrian.

"I have an idea," Garry said, towing Ib along by the hand towards the light switches. "I think that we can induce the portal into Guertena Gallery by mimicking the things that happened that day when we came in through _Abyss of the Deep. _Ib, we have to recount everything that happened that day."

"First, the lights flickered," Ib said once they got to the switches. "I was in front of that painting, and there was no one in the hall with me. When I got out of the hall, there was nobody around and I got scared when I couldn't find my parents. I wandered around for a while, looking for people, and when I came back to this painting there was the paint dripping down from it. It said, 'Come Ib'. I wandered around, and it seemed like I was being followed. There was knocking and red paint dripping from a window…"

"By then, though, you would have already been in the parallel world," Garry said.

"I wasn't until I stepped through the_ Abyss of the Deep,_" She shook her head. "It was all so confusing. I can't even make sense of it now. Was I in the other world when the lights flickered or when I jumped into the abyss?"

"I'm actually thinking the latter," Garry muttered.

"I might be too," Ib said. "What happened to you? When you came in?"

"It was actually considerably different," Garry said. "I was looking at a painting when suddenly the lights shut off all together. I stumbled along, looking for an exit, when I stumbled backwards, straight over the ropes and into _Abyss of the Deep._ It was coincidental, but I was in there nonetheless. I think it was meant for you – the entrance, I mean – but I just happened to enter as well."

"Do you think that's what happened to Holly and Toby? That they were coincidental?" Ib asked.

"Or the girl he's looking for was coincidental and Holly was meant to be there," Garry said, gesturing to Adrian.

"There's only one way to find out," Ib said, and she placed her hand over the light switch and let them flicker.


	8. Chapter 8

**So I couldn't update too much yesterday because I had to have dinner with my fam. Between my dad dropping the pie and my grandmother dropping her bracelet in the toilet and everyone talking about politics at the tops of their lungs, I got a severe headache and could barely look at a screen let alone think up a new chapter. That's what you get when you take six Italians and combine it with chocolate pie…**

**Thanks to DeluxeMagnum69 for reviewing the last chapter. I have been softening up to the IbxGarry fandoms, but I still have only one setting in my mind for Garry: brother. It's just what my mind is hardwired to think. I do understand that the age difference isn't that high (considering my parents are 8 ½ years apart and my aunt and her boyfriend are about 15 years apart) but I have something else in mind for Garry this time around (*snickers*).**

**Rate, review, tell your friends, eat pudding with a fork. Thank you.**

"Oh crap," Cassia muttered as they entered the next room.

There were no doors, just walls. An olive green pattern laced the top and an ornate design cascaded down the ivory paint in pillars. Cassia and Holly turned around to go back, but the hallway disappeared behind them.

"Now what?" Holly asked.

"Let's look around for switches or more paint," Cassia said, moving forward towards the wall. "Maybe we can get to a clue."

They split up, fanning out to all the walls. Holly looked on the left, Cassia on the right. She ran her hands across the wallpaper, looking for notches or loose paper. She scanned the room and something caught her eye. She went over to the front wall and saw that there was more paint dripping down from a crack. She ran her hand over it and saw that half of it was dry and half of it was still dripping. Suddenly, she heard a familiar stamping sound and stepped back, but there were no words this time. Suddenly, the lights went out. Cassia stumbled backwards and hit the back wall.

"Cassia?" Holly whimpered. "Cassia?"

"I'm here Holly," Cassia said towards the sound of her voice. "Just stay there. They'll come back on."

They did, in fact, come on again, but the image they were met with shocked Cassia. The entire room was covered in words. Huge, painted words crudely fashioned all over the floors, ceiling and walls spelled out this:

_PAINT THE WAY_

_PAINT THE WAY_

_PAINT THE WAY_

_PAINT THE WAY_

"Paint the way?" Holly asked. "Is that Belle's handwriting?"

"No," Cassia said. "It's crude, more childlike. Curvier. Belle's handwriting is more regal, fancier. Like she was well taught or wrote often."

"Have you seen this before?"

"Once, when I first came in here," Cassia said, examining the letters on the wall closer. "It said, 'Not alone, not alone, find them all, if you want to go home.'"

"Is there someone other than Belle here, you think?"

"Maybe," Cassia said. She opened her bag and fished around inside. Once she pushed aside her notebook and ebony pencils, her hand closed around a small stick of wood. She brought out the bristly paintbrush – her biggest one – and flipped it around. "As for the clue, I have an idea."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nothing happened the first time they tried.

"Okay," Garry said, "It's a start."

"She said that the hall she was in was empty," Adrian supplied. He pointed to the two other people in the hall with them, looking at the paintings at the end of the area. "Maybe we need to empty it first."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a convert," Garry smiled at Adrian. Ib laughed a little under her breath.

"I figure you're either telling the truth, or you'll get arrested for trying to jump into a painting and be out of my hair forever," Adrian shrugged. "It's a win-win."

"Can you get those people out of the hall?" Ib asked. Adrian nodded and went over to the two people. Garry and Ib watched him as he flashed the couple a winning smile and said a few things, then they were led out of the hall by him.

He came back and said, "Mission accomplished."

"What did you _say _to them?" Ib asked incredulously.

"I said that I was an official working for the museum and that I was asked to clear the hall for tour purposes," He smiled crookedly, almost like Garry does. Garry couldn't help but compare Adrian to himself and some of their shocking similarities… and shocking differences. "I even threw in that you were an art critic visiting with your daughter."

"Nice touch," Garry said. He pointed back to the lights and said, "Ib, get the lights again. Let's try this one more time."

Ib went over to the lights and flicked the switch up and down, up and down. Garry had a strange sense of vertigo and he knew it was working because he was it in Ib's eyes as well.

"Stop now, Ib," Garry said, and Ib stopped the lights. None of them dared look behind them to see if the area at the end of the hall was still inhabited by art enthusiasts and museum-goers. "Did it work?"

Ib was the first to turn around. She ran to the end of the hall, Garry in hot pursuit. Adrian trailed behind, probably scared of the outcome. Ib and Garry emerged into the large domed area, and what they saw shocked them. The area which had been previously taken up by about twenty people looking at art was now deserted. You could cut through the silence with a knife.

"It worked," Ib squeaked.

"Come on," Garry grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down the hall towards where Adrian was, an when they found him they saw he was staring at a little blue stain under the painting, like it just dripped out or appeared out of nowhere.

"It just… came out," Adrian said.

"This is good," Ib said. "This is very good."

"Ib, go up and touch it," Garry prompted her. She looked at him nervously, but he smiled down at her and said, "It's okay. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Ib nodded and went up to the blue splotch of paint. She reluctantly stretched her arm out, and her fingers met the wet paint. There was a stamping noise, and on the floor letters spelled out. But they didn't say 'Come Ib'. They said something different:

_COME ADRIAN_

"Me?" Adrian's face paled. "Why me?"

"I don't know," Ib said. "But we'll find out."

She grasped Gary's hand tightly in one hand and Adrian's shaking one in the other. They looked at each other and Garry nodded to Ib.

"Let's go," he said.

Together, they jumped into the painting.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"All done," Holly said, leaning back from the wall, wet paintbrush in hand.

She'd spent about five minutes tracing the outline of a door and a doorknob on the far wall. She'd spent some time on the detail, making it look like the doors she'd previously walked through. Nothing happened for a moment, then the lights shut off again. The darkness was quick because it was only out for a few seconds, but when they came back on the letters had changed:

_IT WON'T WORK_

_IF NOT BY HER HAND_

"That's Belle's handwriting!" Holly exclaimed, running up to the wall. She ran across the swooping, curly writing with her fingers and said, "She's trying to tell us something that the other one won't."

"'If not by her hand'…" Cassia said. She held out her hand and said, "Holly give me the paintbrush."

Holly handed her the paintbrush and she filled the end with paint. She then traced over the door Holly drew with careful precision. As she painted, the blue paint seemed to shimmer in the light, as if pumped full of bright glitter. When she was finished, the door frame glowed, and suddenly a knob popped out of the wall like a card would pop out of a dispenser.

"You have magical painting powers!" Holly gleefully exclaimed, spinning around. Her dress twirled around her.

"I highly doubt that," Cassia muttered, putting her paintbrush back into her bag. She pulled on the knob, and the wall opened up like a door. She gestured to the door and said, "Shall we?"


	9. Chapter 9

**Well, I had a kickass time at the Linkin Park/Incubus concert. Especially when my day went as follows: Supernatural and House ALL DAY LONG. Dean is a sexy beast :) especially when fighting demons. **

**If I could combine Ib with another anime, I'd combine it with Ouran High School Host Club. Tamaki would be best friends with Garry and Ib and Haruhi would be like sisters. I'd also do it with Pokémon, because I could do some epic pairings (i.e. either Zoruark or Gardevoir for Garry)**

**Oh and question: What's better, wizards at a boarding school or wizards in an orphanage? My story ideas are clashing. **

**Rate and review. MTFBWYA. Here's a rather long chapter for you:**

It was dark for a moment, then Ib felt herself growing weightless. She realized that she was falling, and she hit the cold stone with a thud. Her breath escaped her and she regained her lung function as Garry and Adrian toppled over to either side of her. This area was darker than the gallery, and Ib realized with a chill that they had succeeded.

"We did it," Garry laughed hoarsely as he propped himself up on his elbows. Adrian helped Ib get up and they in turn helped Garry get off the floor. "We actually did it!"

"Wow," Adrian said bluntly. "So you were telling the truth."

"Come on, Ib!" Garry said, pointing down the hall. "This way!"

_How can he be so excited? _Ib thought, her face twisting into a confused expression. _This was the worst and most scarring experience of my life. Both he and I almost died on several occasions and back then I could barely read let alone fight back. Then again, we know what to expect. At least, we think we do…_

They went down the hallway and into a room. The room was empty and had gray walls that had a faint flush of mauve. Something in the middle of the room was glowing. As they approached, Ib realized that the object in the middle of the room was a table. On top of that table was a beautiful vase, and inside the vase was a rose. It was a rich purple color and seemed to glow as long as it was in the clear water of the vase.

"That looks a lot like our roses," Garry said."But… mine is more of a sky blue and hers is more of a maroon red. Who's could this be?"

"Maybe it's mine," Adrian stepped forward, the purple light of the rose illuminating his dark looks. His eyes and the rose's petals were almost the exact same color and when he reached out and took the rose, it glowed brighter in his hand. "Those words at the painting said 'Come Adrian', so I must have a reason to be here."

"But if his rose is here," Ib turned to Garry with a concerned expression. "Then where are ours?"

Their question as soon answered, because when Adrian put his rose in the inside pocket of his coat, the room began to rumble. The floor shook, and they all nearly fell over. Ib gripped Garry's coat and Adrian hung on to the table until the tremors ceased. Suddenly, something came up from the floor and jutted towards the ceiling. It was a large sharp pillar and it hung on to the floor like a stalactite. It had something scripted in it. Ib, Garry, and Adrian moved closer to the pillar and saw that there was writing on it. When Ib looked closer, she cried out and reeled back, clinging to Garry in fear.

"Garry!" she cried. "That's Mary's handwriting!"

"No," Garry's eyes widened. "No. that's impossible. We killed her, didn't we? We burned her painting! I watched her die!"

"This has to be a trick the gallery is playing," said Adrian. "But the handwriting isn't what's important. It's what it says that concerns us."

They looked closer, and saw that on the front face it said:

_ARE YOU LOOKING FOR SOMETHING?_

_YOU'LL HAVE TO FIND ME TO FIND THEM_

_AND I HAVE A NEW HOME_

_SO PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WILL BE A WASTE OF TIME_

They walked around and saw that on the second side it said:

_I'M LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TOO_

_FIND HER, BRING HER TO ME_

_AND I WILL BURN HER_

_LIKE YOU BURNED ME, REMEMBER?_

Garry and Ib exchanged worried glances and Adrian lifted an eyebrow. "This just keeps getting freakier and freakier," he said. They moved to the other side and read the last panel:

_DO IT, AND DO IT FAST_

_OR I'LL PLUCK THEM UNTIL THEY'RE BARE_

_ONE PETAL AT A TIME, UNTIL YOU DIE_

_OR YOU GET HER TO ME_

"Mary," Ib hissed. "It has to be her."

"We don't know that," Garry said.

"'Like you burned me'? It HAS to be her," Ib said. "She's back, and she wants something from us. But how? How did she get our roses? How did she survive the fire? _We watched her die._"

"I don't know, Ib," Garry looked terrified as well. "All we can do is hope for the best."

"Hope? No," Ib shook her head. "We have to find whoever Mary is looking for. Or, we find where she's hiding. Whichever comes first."

"Or you die?" Adrian said.

"Or we die…"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Oh gosh," Holly said, burying her face in Cassia's shirt. "Please tell me that's not what I think it is."

But it was. There was no door, only four walls. The entire room was covered in mannequin heads. Creepy, staring mannequin heads. They littered the floor, all placed strategically in groups or alone, and they must have been twenty of them. The wall before them was splattered with red paint like blood and there were words written in the blood with what looked like fingers… like a child was finger painting in someone's blood. This was certainly NOT Belle's handwriting:

_FIND THE ONE WHO CRIES IN BLOOD_

_USE THE TEARS TO OPEN THE BOOK_

_BUT ALL WRONG CHOICES HAVE A PRICE_

"Book?" Holly looked around. "I don't see a book."

"Maybe we have to find that too," Cassia said.

"So what should we do?" Holly asked.

"I think we have to smash the heads until we find the one with red inside," Cassia said. "So let's start."

She kicked over the nearest mannequin head and watched as the fissures appeared in its skull. One more kick and it smashed into a million pieces, scattering across the floor. There was no blood inside. Suddenly, there was a crashing, like a hatch falling open, and Cassia's head snapped towards the sound. A square had opened in the wall and red liquid was pouring out in bucketfuls. It spilled onto the floor, covering the soles of their shoes.

_All wrong choices have a price…_

"Holly, we can't just smash whatever we see," Cassia said as the red paint covered her shoes. Suddenly, as the paint came up to her ankles, it stopped. "Every wrong move will trigger more paint until the whole room is full, and I have a feeling there's going to be more next time we make a mistake."

"Maybe they're set up in a kind of pattern," Holly said.

Cassia and Holly both looked at the different groups of heads, but saw no pattern. They were randomly placed; some in groups, some in doubles, some singular. Holly sighed and put a mannequin head down, defeated. Cassia's head steamed, and in the heat of the moment, she threw the mannequin head she was holding and it smashed into shards when it hit the wall. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard a new hatch opening and red paint began to fill the room again. After thirty second or so, it was up to their waists. Holly waded over to another head and shook it inside, listening for swishing, and tossed it lightly to one side. It floated away as the paint rose. Then Cassia had a revelation just as she was beginning to get scared.

"Holly!" She sloshed over to her and saw that it was up to Holly's neck. She was almost treading in the paint (which in retrospect shouldn't have been scientifically possible) which worried Cassia. "The hollow heads float! We have to find the one that sinks!"

"And it will be the one full of the red tears!" Holly cried.

Cassia frantically felt around at her feet as the paint slowly crept up her torso. Soon, she was forced to hold her breath and dive into the paint. It was the worst sensation in the world because she felt blind and sticky. She broke the surface, dripping with paint. She wiped it from her eyes and waded to a new area. Holly wasn't doing well; the paint was making them rise and Holly couldn't touch the floor. She came up for air again and was beginning to give up hope. The room was just so big…

That's when her foot brushed up against something. She cried, "Holly, I think I've found it!"

She dove down and grabbed the head. It was heavier then the others and as she hefted it above the surface and cracked it open, dark maroon paint spilled out. It came out of the tear ducts, and Cassia knew they were in the clear.

"Now we just need the book!" Holly sputtered, trying to keep her head above the surface. They had about five or six feet until they hit the ceiling, so they had to act fast. She dove below again and felt around for another heavy head that might have this "book" in it. She broke the surface and made her way over to the other side, and when she finally found the other head, they had about three feet until the ceiling.

"Here!" Cassia cried, cracking the head open.

Inside was a leather bound notebook and it was bone dry. She discarded the empty shell of the mannequin head and tried to pry open the book. She saw that the notebook was tied, and tied tightly. She took her fingers and scooped up some of the mannequin's paint. She smeared it over the tie, and before her eyes the strap untied itself. Inside there were entries, like a diary or a field journal. She looked at the title page:

_The Diary or Guertena Weiss_

"This is Guertena's diary!" Cassia called to Holly.

"Read it! Find something!" Holly said. Her face was pale with fear.

She flipped through it, her eyes quickly scanning the pages. It talked about his life and his works of art. It seemed like he became more erratic, so she looked for the source of this. The last normal entry she found was a tear splattered page that said this:

_May 13__th_

_My dear daughter passed away this morning. I'm coping with the loss slowly, but there's not much my mind can do to wrap around a second death. First their mother, then my first, then my second…? Does God have a score to settle with me? What did I do to deserve this? All I want to do is use my artistic view to help those around me, but all I've done is create this horrible life for myself. I now wish to immortalize all three of them in my art, and they will be the finest things I've ever painted in my career._

_-Guertena-_

"Hurry it up, Cassia!" Holly said, and Cassia saw with a jolt that they were about two feet from running out of air.

She flipped through the diary and found a strange page in the middle, and something was circled in red. It was a word, and it seemed to be marked by a crayon in a very childlike manner. She looked up and all she saw was ceiling. Holly screamed and went under, and Cassia's heart went cold. She knew what she needed to do.

"_Charmaria!"_ She shrieked, and her head was forced under the red paint.


	10. Chapter 10

**I can't believe I'm on chapter ten. Chapter **_**ten.**_** In **_**one week **_**I wrote**_** TEN CHAPTERS! **_**This must be celebrated. It has to. Maybe I'll write a song or something. **_**Gallery, o' gallery, how twisted are your visions? **_**Yeah I'm pretty sure Christmas carolers won't like that one. Well, I'll work on it. Anyway, did you like that cliffhanger on the last chapter? Did they drown? Did they live? HOW MANY MORE CHAPTERS UNTIL SOMEONE FINALLY DIES? I'm not entirely sure. So, here's the next chapter.**__

**Review please. I love hearing your feedback!**

Ib walked briskly in front of them and Garry and Adrian almost had to run to catch up with her. The corridor was long and the walls gradually changed color as they went along. The light was dull and the shadows were cast in every corner, every cranny.

"Ib, sweetie, slow down," Garry said, and he actually had to grab her to slow her down. He gave her a concerned look and said, "We shouldn't rush."

"What do you mean, 'we shouldn't rush'?" She growled as her face heated up. "Mary has our roses! How can you not be panicking?"

"Trust me, I _would _usually be panicking," Garry said with a small shake of his head. "But this is NOT the time for that. When we panic, we make rash decisions, and we can't afford that if we want to live. Now we just have to find our way through this place and find any leads to who this girl Mary wants is or why she wants her."

They turned a corner, and suddenly they were in a room. It was illuminated blue by tinted light bulbs and there was a large staircase ascending up out of the other end of the room. There were paintings hanging on the wall, strange as always, but that's not what was strange. Laying collapsed in the middle of the room was a person.

Ib let go of Garry's hand and rushed over to the person. She crouched next to him and placed her hand on his neck. Her father was a doctor and taught her how to do this. She felt a slow, faint beat under her fingertips and called out, "He's got a pulse!"

The boy had dark brown hair, darker then Ib's, and he was wearing a blue gamer tee of some kind (Ib didn't know the game). He looked about two years older than Ib, maybe less. His skin was pale from being passed out, but Ib thought that would go away when they revived him. _If _they revived him…

She saw something rolled up in his hands and when she unrolled his fist and collected the contents she gasped. How could she not have noticed the blue petals littering the floor around them? This boy had a rose… a blue rose.

"Garry!" she said. "Is this your rose?"

"No," He said, sounding quite certain. "Mine was lighter, definitely, and brighter. His is more of a deep ocean blue."

"'Deep ocean blue'?" Adrian lifted an eyebrow. "Been writing poetry lately?"

"Yeah, I wrote a haiku this morning," Sarcasm dripped in Garry's words as he joined Ib by the boy's side. He was breathing, but his rose only had the middle bud left, which meant that he was dead. But… he wasn't. He wasn't dead, and Ib didn't know why. Did he know about the save book? No, they hadn't seen any on the way in. So how was he still alive?

"We need water," Ib said. "We need to get the petals back on his rose."

"Um…" Adrian dug deep into his coat pockets and pulled out one of those mini water bottles that held about a pint of water. It was easily concealed in his jacket. "Will this do?"

"Perfect," Garry said as he lobbed it at Ib and he caught it in midair. He tossed it to her, but she fumbled with it and it fell on the ground. Garry tried to teach her how to properly catch a baseball about a month ago, but she was no good.

She unscrewed the cap on the bottle. It was about half full; good for about three petals. Looking at the petals strewn around them, he had six on his rose originally – one more than Ib. She picked up the rose and put it in the water. It glowed brightly with a deep blue sheen and the petals spurted out of it almost immediately, growing in one by one. The color returned to the boy's face and his eyes fluttered open. They were a similar deep blue color to his rose. He took a deep breath in and sat up quickly, looking around. He locked his eyes with Ib's and his eyes widened.

"My sister!" He cried out as he scrambled back away from Ib. "Get away from me! Get away from us!"

"Hey, it's okay," Ib said. She moved closer to him and sat on her knees in front of him. He was breathing heavily and his back was pressed up against the wall. His eyes darted around nervously, and he looked past her towards Adrian and Garry. "Who are you? How did you get here?"

Adrian stepped forward, but Garry held him back. "She's got this."

"I…" He looked at her again. "Me… and my sister, she…"

"You have a sister?" She asked, and her chest ached when she thought of Holly. Maybe he knew her.

"Yes," he nodded. His body loosened and he shook his head. "We got lost when the lights went out… we got separated from our mom and went down this corridor… we went _through _something…"

"He probably went through the portal without knowing it," Garry added.

"My sister and I were at the museum," He was speaking in complete sentences now and he sat forward on his knees like Ib. He was a good head or so taller than her. "We came here for my birthday and my mom left us to look at some de Mois stuff in another section. I dragged her to the ancient cultures exhibit, and she really didn't want to go, so she ran off. I followed her, and when I caught her, the lights went out. After that, we went through something that didn't feel like a door and ended up here. We were chased by a hoard of monsters, and I told her to run. I passed out here after I lost them."

"You said you came here because today is your birthday," Ib said. Her heart was skipping like a humminbird's, because this sounded like Holly's story. Was this Holly's brother? Did he know where she went? Why in the world was he passed out on the floor, and where was Holly? "How old are you?"

"Thirteen," he said. "What about you guys?"

"I'm eleven, Garry over there with the purplish hair is sixteen, and Adrian is fifteen."

"My name is Toby," He said, and Ib's face lit up. This _was _Holly's brother!

"Oh God, you're Holly's brother!" Ib squealed. She stood up and brushed off, and so did he. "I know her! We're friends!"

"Really?" he said. "Are you Ib? The one she always talks about?"

"Yeah, that's me. You said she's alive?" Ib looked at him hopefully.

"If she ran like I told her to," he said. "Ib. That's a funny name."

"It's a nickname," she said.

"So what is your real name?" Toby asked.

"I don't tell people my real name," Ib said, and she led Toby over to Garry and Adrian, who was holding Toby's rose in the water bottle. The rose had sapped all the water out of the bottle, so the next time they saw a water vase they'd have to replenish. Portable water was a luxury Ib and Garry didn't have before. "It's a little old-timey. I and B are my initials, so my dad called me Ib and it stuck. Only Garry and Holly know."

"At least my parents didn't name me something ridiculous like Tobias," His laugh was infectious, at least to Ib. "Just Toby."

"Okay, not that I don't _love _playing the name game," Adrian said irritably. His hand was at his temple like he had a migraine. "but I for one want to make it out of here alive. Any objections?"

"Right," Garry said with a nod. "No more games. Let's get down to business."

Adrian turned to Toby. "You said you have a sister?"

"Yeah. That's Holly, Ib's friend. She's seven, almost eight. How did you get here, Ib? And these guys, Garry and Adrian?" He asked.

"Garry is my legal guardian and we kind of picked up Adrian along the way," Ib said. "Garry and I… well, we've been here before. In the Guertena Gallery. We were lucky to make it out alive, so when Holly said you were coming for your birthday I tried to talk her out of it because the Central Art Museum was built on top of it, but she didn't listen. Then our roses went missing," She pointed to his rose that he held in his hand. He'd removed it from the water bottle and given the empty plastic container back to Adrian. "and they look like that. I called your house, but none of you were home, and that's how I knew you guys were in trouble."

"You came here just to save my sister and I?" His face looked awestruck.

"And now we have to find her. I have to know that she's all right," Ib said. "Garry and I need to recover our roses too."

"That's really brave," He said, and Ib felt her cheeks flush. She was mad that Holly never mentioned that her brother was cute. _No, _she thought with an imperceptible shake of her head. _Stop it, Ib. Your life is on the line. Now is NOT the time for this._

"O-_kay,_" Garry said. He had suddenly appeared at Ib's side. He often did that when she didn't expect it, especially when he was feeling protective. "Let's go. The only way out is up, right?


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter eleven commences at 11:00. I made a point to do that. Independence Day is an awesome movie. So is War of the Worlds (epicness going on there). Transformers is okay. So you could say I've had an alien packed day. **

**Will Smith with a lightsaber: I have GOT to get me one of these!**

**Will Smith with a wand: I have GOT to get me one of these!**

**Will Smith with a Pokémon: I have GOT to get me one of these!**

**Will Smith with a flying pair of Chucks: I have GOT to get me one of these! **

**Me with a love life: I have GOT to get me one of these!**

**See? It never changes. So anyway, who's been having a fun summer? I have, and it's been quite eventful. Well, not lately, you see, because I've dedicated my time to movie watching and fanfictioning for the last couple weeks and the only time I stopped my lazy streak was to go to an epic concert. But it is what it is, and once summer is over, it's over, and then I'll be like, "Be seein' ya, summer! I've got some college credits to earn!" even though college is a long way away.**

**Review please!**

_I won't die here, _Cassia thought as her lungs were ready to burst. _I WILL NOT DIE HERE._

Suddenly, there was a huge sucking sound that Cassia could hear even under the paint. She was being tugged towards the wall and suddenly she was tossed around and spit out of the wall. She regained her sight and her air as the paint poured out into this second room and dispersed through holes in the ground. Cassia lay flat on her back, savoring every breath of air she breathed, until all that was left of the paint was drained out and there was only about an inch of it covering the floor. The she realized with a heart wrenching pain that Holly was on the floor next to her, and she wasn't moving.

"_Holly!" _She cried as she tripped over herself to get to her. She crawled over and flipped Holly on her back. Paint was dripping from the sides of her mouth and she was completely covered in it, like Cassia was. She made her sit up and she shook her hard as the paint dripped out of her throat. "Oh God, Holly, come on baby, please live. Come on, breathe Holly, breathe!"

Suddenly, a whole lot of paint came from her at once and Holly's eyes fluttered open as she tore away from Cassia and retched up the paint next to her. He coughed and sputtered, and she began to sob heartbrokenly. Cassia held her close as she racked with tears and buried her face in Holly's golden hair, now caked with paint.

"Shh, it's okay. We're okay now, Holly. You're alive. We made it," Cassia said.

"I want to go home!" Holly sobbed. "I want my mom, Cassia, and I want to go home!"

"We're going to get out of here," Cassia said. "I promise we'll get out of here. We'll find your brother, we'll get your mom, and we'll get out of this damn place. Oh God, Holly, I'm so glad you're okay."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"There's another staircase," Ib pointed to the right once they were up the first set of stairs and into another room. "But what's that written on the wall?"

Ib was right. Garry moved closer to the wall and the light clearly illuminated the word _CHOOSE. _

"Why would they make us choose between staircases?" Adrian asked. He pointed down the blue steps they'd just come from and said, "We just came from that way."

"There's something here on the floor," Toby said as he knelt down and pushed the dust away from the words. Written in drying and chipping paint was: _BLUE IS WHAT YOU NEED, RED IS WHERE YOU NEED TO GO. _"This doesn't make sense. Why would they tell us this if we already know the right answer?"

"Because," Garry said, the revelation dawning on him. "we weren't the first ones here."

"What?" Ib asked.

"Think about it," Garry said, pointing to the back wall. "Doors reappear and disappear from this place like clockwork, so if a door was over there and someone came through it, they would have to choose between what they needed and where they needed to go."

"I was in that room," Toby's voice was trembling. "It had to have been Holly who came through here. But she would have come to save me. It's the only thing she would have known to do, and it could have lead to a dead end or the stairs would close behind her. The door in that room disappeared, so there would be no way out of there. We would have died. So… who told her not to?"

"It had to be the girl I met," Adrian said. "She would know to avoid the temptation. Somehow she must have known there would be other people passing through to save you."

"So should we take the red stairs?"

"Seeing as that's our best option," Garry led the way up.

They climbed the stairs, and lining the staircase were more paintings, all ones of Guertena's hand. Garry tried his best in their year in the real world to track down some leads on Guertena's life and his gallery, but found nothing but catalogues for his paintings before they were destroyed in the fire._ Come to think of it,_ Garry thought, _that painting – _Whimsy World_ or _Fabricated World_ or whatever it's called – may well be the last surviving painting of the Guertena Gallery. _Garry couldn't help but know that Ib and he probably started the fire that consumed the gallery. Mary's fire could have spread into the real world after Ib and Garry left. If it burned Mary's painting as fast as it did, then it would have put the gallery up in flames in minutes.

But Garry was still confused. _If it destroyed all of that other art, _he thought, _then why is Mary not dead?_

They reached the top of the staircase and they found themselves in a room. The room was empty except for repeated words stamped across everything: _PAINT THE WAY._

"We're getting closer," Adrian pointed to the far side of the wall. "Look at that, over there. Someone painted a door out of here. They must have used the paint from that crack over there."

"Let's go through it," Toby supplied, and one by one they filed through the door, and what they saw in the next room shocked them to their cores.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"We have to keep moving," Cassia said, helping Holly up from the slippery ground.

"Do you still have Guertena's diary?"

Cassia looked around her and saw that she'd dropped it when they were flushed out. She picked it up and brushed some paint off it. "Here it is. This could help us along the way. Come on, let's go."

She held Holly's hand as they went up to the door. As soon as Cassia turned the knob, a sudden wind picked up. The cool breeze was unfamiliar on Cassia's skin, but the air shimmered nonetheless and as the wind spun the paint lifted off the floor and off their clothes and whisked into a hole in the wall. All the paint was gone from Cassia's clothes and hair, and Holly smiled as she twirled in her paint-free dress.

Cassia put her hand back on the knob, but when she jostled it, she found that it was locked. She pulled at it several times, even braced her foot against the wall as she yanked, but nothing would budge the door. Something began to shimmer on the pane of the door, and Cassia was half angered and half relieved to see that the handwriting was Belle's:

_I'd wait if I were you._

"Wait?" Holly asked. "Wait for what?"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The floor was covered in blood. No, it wasn't blood. It was sopping wet with paint. The pain dripped from the ceiling and the walls, like at one time this entire room was filled with the stuff. Garry's heart nearly stopped as he saw the dripping hatches that opened in the walls. The place was littered with manequin heads, some broken, some intact, all covered in blood.

"This whole place was submerged," Ib whispered.

"Holly!" Toby called out. He cupped his hands over his mouth and called out again, _"HOLLY!"_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"HOLLY!"

Holly's head turned around, and her face twisted into a confused look. "Toby?"

"Holly!"

Her face lit up, and she tore away from Cassia. She ran back through the hatch, her shoes kicking up red paint behind her, as a few figures came into view. They were… people? Yes, they were people! There was one tall guy with strange light purple hair and a long jacket, and one small girl with long brown hair and red eyes like Cassia. There was also another guy with them, with black hair and purple eyes. _It's that guy from the museum! _Cassia thought with a jolt. In front of them all was a boy with chocolate brown hair and deep blue eyes, and Holly flew into his arms.

"Holly," He sobbed while he buried his face in her hair. "Oh Holly, you're okay. You're okay…"

"I was so scared," she whimpered. "I thought you were dead. I thought you were_ dead_."

"I would never leave you," He pulled her back an arm's length and still held onto her shoulders. She looked her in the eyes and said, "Not now, not ever."

"I…" Cassia felt like she was intruding on this moment in saying, but she had to. "Do any of you have roses?"

They all looked at her like they just noticed she was there.

"That's a strange question," The violet haired boy said. "But yes, we all do. Or… we all should."

Cassia breathed a sigh of relief. "Good, because I was beginning to think I'd never find you. Someone told me to find people with gold, purple, and blue roses, and I could get out."

"I've got a blue rose and Holly has a gold one," Toby said.

"And I have a purple one," The boy from the museum said, and when he locked eyes with Cassia he gave her a little smile.

"Are you the one who was traveling with my sister?"Toby asked Cassia.

"Yeah. I found her and she was frantic about finding you. She's a brave little girl," She smiled at Holly and Holly beamed back. "She put in just as much effort as I did to getting this far."

"What happened to you guys?" The other girl asked.

Holly's face lit up again when she saw the other girl and dislodged herself from her brother's grip to run over and hug her tightly. "Ib! Oh Ib, how in the world did you get here! I missed you! I should have listened to you when you said not to come."

"It wasn't your fault," Ib squeezed her back. She let her go and looked at Cassia. "Who are you?"

"My name is Cassia," Cassia said. "I'm fifteen."

"I'm Ib, this is my brother Garry, and this is Adrian," The girl named Ib said. "The boy is Toby, and I guess you know his sister Holly. We could tell you how we got here, but that would be a long story."

"I've got time," Cassia said. "Hell, we've got all the time in the world."

And so their tale began.


	12. Chapter 12

**So, I need to get a project done… But here I am, writing a fanfiction and finishing the movie Twister. "Rabbit is good, Rabbit is wise." Anyway, how do you like the story so far? I finally got the whole group together, but how long can they stay that way? I have more in store for them, you mark my words. Now I'm watching Pirates of the Caribbean and this is making me want to write a pirate story. I've done it before but I dropped it after 43 pages…**

**Oh well. I'll just go on watching the strangest romance movie ever. Review please! "I gotta go Julia, we've got cows!"**

"I don't think this was the way we were supposed to go," Cassia muttered as they came upon the same painting for the third time. After they got finished telling their tales to each other, they walked along and found that the hall ended with a painting and a hall going to the right. but, at the end of that hall, there was the painting again, and again, and again.

"We've been walking in circles," Holly plopped herself on the ground in front of the painting they kept coming across. It was a portrait and it looked like it was painted before his breakdown because it wasn't erratic or death based. It was of a woman with long, dark brown hair, wearing a red velvet dress. She sat in a chair with her hand resting on the armrest delicately and her clear blue eyes looked forward intently. The colors in the painting were bright, like she was glowing with a silvery light.

They took a closer look for the first time and saw that on the plaque was the title and a few words:

_Lumareine_

_In Memory of My Beloved Reyna Weiss_

Cassia quickly opened her bag and took out Guertena's diary. She flipped it open to an entry she was curious about, and said, "Guys, I think this was Guertena's wife."

"What makes you say that?" Adrian asked, moving closer to her to see the diary page.

"While I was looking through this, the passage that saved us was on this page," Cassia pointed to the passage from May that had the word in red that saved her and Holly. "It talks about how his wife died, then his first daughter, then his second. He lost his whole family and he said he would immortalize them in art."

"The word was _Charmaria?"_ Garry had joined her on her other side, and Ib was craning her neck to look too. "That sounds… vaguely familiar…"

"It's like Belle's painting," Cassia said. She and Holly told them all about Belle too. "Her painting was _Glaiciabelle. _Like a combination of her name or a derivation of her name along with the word used to describe her painting. She was in the snow. Reyna Weiss looks like she was glowing silver, angelic almost, so her word was luma, like light."

"So… what's Charmaria?" Holly asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," Cassia said. "We just have to look through this thing until we see him mention _Charmaria_ again."

Cassia began to flip through pages slowly from the beginning. She scanned the pages briefly before moving on, looking only for one word. Her face twisted into a concentrated expression as she looked quicker and quicker across each page. She was ready to give up, when Garry froze beside her and stopped her hand from flipping the page.

"Wait a second. Flip the page back. I thought I saw something."Cassia flipped the pages back and he said, "There. That passage. It mentions Mary."

"Mary? The painting girl that stole your roses?" Cassia asked.

"She was supposed to be a painting, but something tells me she might not have been at one time," Garry's eyes showed fear and he said, "Look."

_June 30__th_

_It took me one month of working nonstop, only pausing for four hours of sleep a day and for food and bathing, but I've finished it. My darling Mary shall live forever though this painting and as long as I have it for the world to see she will never die. I will make sure she lives on, like her mother did, in art. She will be immortalized in my heart and on my canvas. I will never stop missing her or her mother or her sister. I will immediately begin the outline for her sister's memorial, and it shall be as wonderful as the others. _

_-Guertena-_

"Mary…" Garry's eyes went wide. "She was Guertena's _daughter?"_

"Look," Adrian said when Cassia flipped the page. On the page was a sketch, like the sketch of a painting. The painting was of a girl who was about nine who had thick blonde hair and crystal blue eyes like Reyna Weiss'. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she stared gleefully at the observer. Yellow roses lined the bottom.

Ib buried her face in Garry's jacket. "That's her."

"I don't get it," Toby said. "Why would he name her painting _Charmaria? _There's nothing charming about this. It's more childlike."

"It isn't _Charm _then _Aria. _Her name is Mary, therefore he used _Maria _which is a derivation of Mary," Cassia said. "So the word is 'char'."

"Char," Ib said. "Like… burnt?"

"But Guertena finished the painting and died before Ib and I even stepped for in here," Garry said. "How could he have known we'd burn it?"

"I have no idea," Cassia said, flipping through the book. "Everyone keep a look out for _Charmaria _or any mention of Mary."

Cassia began flipping through again, but she was quickly stopped around august by Holly's hand. "I saw another mention of Mary. Go back to August the seventh."

She went back and saw the entry. It said as such:

_August 7__th_

_A horrible, horrible thing happened today. In the night, while I was working late on my beloved Mary's portrait, I drifted off and as I fell into Morpheus' arms I knocked over a candle. When I awoke, a searing pain was shooting through my arms and the whole room was filled with light despite it being the middle of the night. My work was going up in flames, and so was my shirt sleeve. When I batted out the flames engulfing my shirt, I ran to salvage every painting I could. I saved three, but my portrait of Mary I'd called Jaunemaria – Yellow Mary – was consumed before my eyes. All my best canvases were burnt to some degree, and when I got the fire out, I was forced to restart Mary's portrait, to my chagrin, on burnt paper. I tried my best to cover up the charred underneath with paint, but nothing could permanently erase the memory of the fire. Because of this, I named my new masterpiece Charmaria, and nicknamed her Mary of the Flames, because underneath her wondrous exterior she will always be scarred by the licking flames of light._

_-Guertena-_

"That's why Mary was so scared of fire," Ib whispered. "Because deep down it was her very being."

"Wait a second," Adrian said. "If he made paintings of his wife and his first daughter… then where's the portrait of the second daughter?"

"I think we already know that," Cassia said, flipping to the entry he made on October the second:

_October 2__nd_

_I've done it; I've finally finished the last of the paintings of my lost loves, the only girls in my life worth painting. Never again will I hire models, never again will I marry or have children. My loves are gone, but they will live on. They will always live on. My final one, my second daughter, was the most beautiful yet. I made sure to make her the opposite of her sister, to make sure that no one could ever burn her, not truly. She is at rest now, I am hoping, but at the same time I long for their return. My beloved Belle was the final straw. My career, my art, and my very being will never be the same. Farewell, Reyna, Mary, and Belle. You will forever remain in my heart._

_-Guertena-_

"Belle," Holly cried. "She's Mary's sister!"

"Which means…" Garry said.

"Belle is who Mary wants from you," Cassia said. "She wants to kill her own _sister_."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

They searched around the hallway for almost a half an hour and no one found anything. They must have walked around that corner twenty times before they gave up and took to looking at the painting again. Now, Holly was sitting against the wall with her brother and Ib, Gary was leaning against the other wall, Adrian was pacing, and Cassia was still stuck looking at the painting for any clues.

"I don't get it," Cassia said. "Usually when we just put our hands on it, then a hatch opens or a clue appears."

"This means that the tests are getting harder, and belle can't always help us," Garry said.

"Belle's probably not helping us too much because she knows we know the truth and that you two might come looking for her to bring her to Mary for ransom," Adrian mumbled.

"Hey! Ib and I would never do that!" Gary protested. "We're not betrayers."

"Well how do we know you're not?" Adrian's face was stony.

"Okay, guys, _stop it," _Cassia hissed, turning around abruptly with a steamed look on her face. "Adrian, stop being an instigator."

"But –"

"We know that this situation we're in is dire, for some of us more than others," Cassia locked eyes with Adrian, and he didn't look away. "But we need to keep it together. Accusing people of things isn't going to get us anywhere."

"Cassia?"

"_What _Holly?" Cassia put her hand on her forehead.

"I think I see something on the frame," She stood up and went over to the painting. She ran her hand over the side and said, "There's something really tiny engraved here on the side."

"All this time, all we had to do was look on the SIDE?" Ib banged her head back on the wall.

Cassia went up to it and squinted. "How did you even _notice _that?"

"I don't know," Her mouth twisted into a confused look. "I just kind of thought of it."

"O-_kay," _Toby said. "So what does it say?"

"I can't make it out very well," Cassia said, "but I think it says, 'What is my name?'"

"'What is my name?'" Garry echoed, leaning back against the wall, a pondering expression on his face. His eyes were purple, but not light like Adrian's. His were very dark, like purple ink. "We could try saying the name of her painting."

"_Lumareine," _Cassia said. They waited a few moments, but nothing happened.

"Reyna?" Holly tried, but that again didn't work.

"Reyna Weiss?"

"Mrs. Weiss?"

None of them seemed to be working, and the painting remained unmoved and unchanged. "Well, this isn't working."

"Try looking in Guertena's diary," Ib said. "Maybe he refers to her by a pet name or something."

"Good idea, Ib," Cassia opened her bag and took out the notebook.

She opened up the book and flipped through the pages again. She couldn't help but be thankful for it, even if obtaining it almost cost her and Holly their lives. It had been a huge help to them in finding out things in this place, especially about the connection between Guertena and Mary and then Mary and Belle.

"Here," Cassia said. "I've found something."

"That entry is towards the beginning," Garry said. "Reyna Weiss was still alive."

_December 11__st_

_Today my light came to see my work. Reyna loves that I'm so creative and I love when she agrees to pose for my work. She says one day my girls will be big enough and patient enough o sit for me to paint them. I'm hoping so, because they will be very beautiful when they get older. I may now be the happiest man alive! I shall get on my next work soon. I'm thinking perhaps a woman in the rain…_

_-Guertena-_

"He called her his light," Holly said. "Like the light of his life."

"It's so sad how he was so happy and ready to grow old with this woman and watch his girls grow up, then it was all taken away from him," Garry's look was sorrowful.

"Yeah…" Cassia said quietly. She closed the book and looked up to the painting. "Light?"

The edges of the frame began to glow, and the painting slid aside. Holly cried, "It worked!"

"Look," Adrian pointed to the painting. "The painting is glowing."

He was right. On the face of the painting words began to appear, glowing across the acrylic. They said:

_Inside is a safe place_

_Rest here for the night then move on_

_You will need the strength for the trials that await you_

"Let's go inside," Cassia stepped in first, and everyone else followed.


	13. Chapter 13

**Yeah, so I started my project on The Odyssey today, and it's going… okay. Meaning to get started, I created a conversations with the characters from this fanfiction on how awful essay writing is. I would put it in here, but it's a little bit long. It has to do with me being bored and my friends from The Four trying to help me figure out what the hell and analytical essay is. Oh, and I have Billy Bob Bob Billy's One Direction song stuck in my head, but you know, it happens. (Ooooooh Louis needs that boat, he dresses like he owns one 'cuz he's got no other clothes.)**

**So, this is my creative outlet. This chapter I've been really excited about writing because it's kind of away from all the perils of the gallery and they can kind of let their characters free. So, review please! I've been really happy hearing from you all and when I read a new review I always feel awesome :) Your feedback has been fantabulous! And… why did I just say fantabulous?**

**So you'll read now, savvy? **

Once everyone was in the room, the painting slid shut. They turned around and on the far side of the room was a vase filled with water sitting on a pedestal. There was a door on the other side and the key to it lay on the pedestal, which meant that nothing could get in. There was a chest pushed up against the right wall.

Adrian went over to the chest while Ib retrieved the key and stuck it into the pocket of her skirt. Adrian opened the chest and pulled out some dusty old blankets.

"These looked like they've been here awhile," He coughed as he handed them out. Cassia grabbed one and handed it to Holly and Toby.

They handed them out until everyone had one and after maybe fifteen minutes or so everyone was spread out on the floor, asleep. Well, everyone but Cassia, who stared at the ceiling, unable to rest.

Toby and Holly pushed their blankets together and he was sleeping with his arm around her. For a brother, he was very protective, and Cassia felt good that someone cared about Holly that much. She was a good kid and deserved that much. Cassia got used to being alone at a young age because her parents were always – _always _– gone. They didn't even know about her art, never saw any of her sketches or paintings, or ever seen her in exhibits. Right then, as she was fighting for her life and trying to save the lives of Garry and Ib, they were on business in Bangladesh… she thinks. It was always so hard to tell because they only called once every month or two. She wished she had someone to depend on.

She sat up and looked around, but no one was awake. Ib slept near Garry, but they gave each other enough space. They referred to each other as siblings, but Cassia knew from what they'd told her that he was just her guardian. He wouldn't be if he hadn't lied about his age, but he was nonetheless, and she acted like he was. _Family comes in all forms, _Cassia thought as she watched Ib shift in her sleep. She looked like she was deeply concentrating on something. Garry, though, looked peaceful while he slept. Cassia couldn't help but wonder what he could possibly be dreaming about. He had a very active mind and Cassia thought that if she got to know him better she could understand it. Ib seems to have understood it already.

Adrian was tucked into a corner and slept facing the wall. He almost blended into the shadows and the only thing that distinguished him from the dark wall was the slow rise and fall of his chest. Cassia was still confused about him. When she met him at the museum, she didn't have time to get to know him or even find out his name. Heck, he didn't even know _her _name, yet he was willing to come with Garry and Ib to find her. What was she supposed to think about that? Did he like her? Or was it just coincidence that they were both supposed to be there? His attitude was witty and dark (and even a bit tiresome at times), but something about it intrigued Cassia.

_It's going to be hard to sleep tonight… _Cassia thought as her vision flickered and she laid back down on the blanket.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_The sun was shining outside the window, but the curtains were drawn and only a little bit of light was allowed in to shed bright rays over a canvas, where a man worked quickly with a paintbrush and a palate. The colors were swirled on the face of the palate, some being used, some not. The man had blonde hair that was slightly longer and tied back in a short ponytail. His glasses were thin and wiry, his green eyes tear stained. Cassia realized with a shock this man was Guertena, and the painting he was working on was definitely _Glaiciabelle. _But something strange was happening, and Guertena didn't appear to be conscious of it. Behind the painting a little girl peeked out, but it was more the form of a girl in shimmery air, her features prominent yet still translucent, like a memory or a vision. She was wearing a blue dress with long sleeves and white piping and had fair blonde hair and crystal blue eyes. She couldn't have been more than eight, and she was wearing a little necklace with a snowflake pendant. Cassia realized that this girl she was seeing was Belle, but Guertena couldn't see her or hear her._

"_Daddy," She said as a confused look passed her face. "I'm here, Daddy. Why can't you hear me?"_

_Guertena continued in his work, not straying for a moment. He didn't acknowledge her, so Belle came around to his chair and looked at what he was painting._

"_Is this me?" she asked. "It's very pretty. Why won't you talk to me? Are you busy?"_

"_He's not busy," A voice came from behind another painting. Belle turned around and went over to the painting._

_Cassia would have gasped if she could, because the painting was _Charmaria, _and standing next to it was Mary herself. Cassia had never seen Mary before, so she was expecting to see someone a little… well, eviler. Someone who looks capable of almost killing two innocent souls with a palette knife, stealing roses for ransom, and devising a plan to kill her own sister. This girl looked sweet and small, with thick golden hair, yellower then Belle's, falling down her shoulders. Her eyes were darker blue, and her dress was green with blue piping. _

"_Mary!" Belle cried. "You're supposed to be…"_

"_Dead… Yeah, I should be," Her look was somber. "I didn't know why I wasn't until I saw this painting. Belle, we were meant to stay. We're supposed to stay forever in these paintings. Daddy is making it so that we really can live again."_

"_Where's Mom?" Belle asked._

_Mary looked on the verge of tears. "She couldn't stay. She didn't get a second chance. She went in to the light a long time ago."_

"_Why did we get a second chance?"_

"_Because we're kids, silly," Mary smiled. "We were too young to die, so we're allowed to stay."_

"_Just like that?"_

"_Just like that, B," Mary said. "I bet the longer we're in the painting, the stronger we'll get when we come out. I bet in maybe a year or so, we could look almost human when we come out again! Maybe we can even be seen by people and talk again! Wouldn't that be great?"_

"_It seems a bit… unnatural," Belle winced._

"_Unnatural?" Mary's expression instantly changed. Her gaze was stormy and very, very angered. Belle seemed to be a little scared by the transition. "Don't you want to live again?"_

"_Are you feeling okay, Mary?" Belle reached out for her sister, but her sister recoiled, a terrified look on her face._

"_Why won't you listen to me?" Mary yelled. "I want to live forever. I want you and I to be together forever! Don't you want that too?"_

"_Mary, you're not acting like yourself –"_

"_FOR-EVER, B," Mary spat, enunciating every syllable. "Forever, B. Trust me."_

_Mary faced her painting and grabbed the edges. She pulled herself up and swung forward, and went through it like she was falling into water. The painting rippled behind her, and soon the only evidence that she was even there was her face in the portrait._

_Cassia was shocked when belle turned to face her. She looked her in the eye and said, "Now you see?"_

_She still couldn't speak, so she just nodded._

"_I loved Mary more than anything, but I knew instantly there was something wrong," Belle said. "The moment she became part of the painting she began to go insane. When I became part of that gallery, I never saw her again. She never showed herself to me. I never came out of that painting for fear she would find me."_

_Cassia mouthed the word 'why'._

"_Why did she go insane?" Belle asked, and Cassia nodded. "Because the painting was damaged. She became damaged too, but not on the outside. Only on the inside; mentally. It's also why she's deathly, deathly afraid of fire. More than any painting should be. Oh, and would you like your speech back? That would help a lot."_

_A light wind blew over Cassia's face, across her lips mostly. She knew she was dreaming, but it still felt real and cold as she drew in a breath and said, "But how are you speaking to me now?"_

"_I'm a spirit; I'm safe from her in dreams," she said._

"_It didn't seem like Mary hated you here," Cassia gestured around her. "Why does she want you in exchange for Garry and Ib's roses? Why does she want to kill you?"_

"_She's been growing more and more unstable as the years have passed," Belle said. "Do you know how long we have been here?"_

"_Um…" Cassia said._

"_I died in 1895," Belle said. Cassia gaped, awestricken. "I've been here for over 115 years, and I haven't missed living not once in those years. I haven't missed my old sister or my mother or my father who killed himself just two years after he finished painting me. But my sister has also had all that time to unravel, and her vision of the world has been twisted by her own subconscious and by the gallery itself. She thinks that in killing me, she can attain the stability to become alive once again."_

"_That's not possible," Cassia said._

"_It's possible for me, but not for Mary… not truly. You see, this is my rose," She pulled something out of her dress pocket and a jolt went through Cassia's body when she saw that she was indeed holding a rose. It had the most petals on it she'd ever seen on any rose; fifteen of them, she counted, and they all shined like molten silver. "And it is very much alive. Mary's though – Ib and Garry can testify to this – is fake, and she can't be hurt unless her painting is damaged. I could become real at any moment, but I can't, because then Mary can come and kill me."_

"_You remind me of someone I know," Cassia said._

_Belle's look softened. "Yes. I take it you're talking about dear little Holly. Yes, we are similar in intelligence and cunning, and in adolescent charm, but that is why I fear for her." _

_Cassia's heart skipped a beat. "Why?"_

"_Cassia, my sister desperately wants to live again. She has proved that she will steal, cheat, lie, threaten, and kill for it," Belle said. "She's convinced that she will be able to solidify her spirit to create a real body like I can, but she can't, and she will figure that out very soon."_

"_And what will happen when she finds out you can't give her what she needs?"_

"_She will figure out what she truly needs to live on," Belle said._

"_What does she need?"_

"_The body of a child," Belle said, her face darkening. "Similar in size and stature, and in looks. Age as well. If she can't make a body for herself, she must take over a new one."_

_Cassia gasped, tears springing into her eyes. "No."_

"_Yes, Cassia," Belle nodded. "Mary will come for Holly."_


	14. Chapter 14

**WHAT THE HEI BAI!? UNWHOLLY IS SO CLOSE TO COMING OUT WHY DOESN'T IT JUST COME OUT ALREADY!? I'M ABOUT TO HAVE A CORONARY. I'M SERIOUS. I MIGHT JUST DIE, RIGHT NOW, WITH ONLY MY CAT AS A WITNESS. IF I DON'T GET THIS BOOK IN THE NEXT WEEK, I MIGHT GO INSANE AND GROW OLD AND UNMARRIED WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF CATS. Six cats in fact, named Arthur, Galahad, Lancelot, Robin, Chairman Meow, and Church. **

**So… I'm psyched that Unwholly is coming out in about a week. As you can see, I get a bit enthusiastic about books. Oh, and the phrase "What the Hei Bai?" is copyright all rights reserved by **_**moi**_**. Thank you very much (even though the rights to Hei Bai go to the creators of Avatar).**

**Review please!**

"Holly!" Cassia gasped as she sat bolt upright on her blanket, her breath coming in gulps. She looked around, but despite her outburst, no one had woken up.

She scrambled up and over to where Toby and Holly were sleeping, but something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. Toby no longer had his arm around Holly; it was laying limb beside him, and the only evidence that Holly had been there were bunches of the blanket where she used to be. Cassia put a hand on Toby and shook him awake. His eyes fluttered open and he stretched.

He looked around and said, "Holly?"

"Holly's gone," Cassia said. "And we have to go get her back, or she's going to die."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Adrian said after Toby and Cassia had awakened everybody. Garry's mind was still a little groggy when he awoke from a dream he could hardly remember and saw that Cassia was looking down on him with her concerned ruby eyes. She had said that Holly had been kidnapped by Mary, and that's all he needed to hear. "Cassia, you had a dream about Belle and figured out why Mary wants her so badly and how they got into the paintings in the first place. You also found out why Mary is, well, _insane, _and that she wants Holly to become human again. Belle also wants to make herself human, but can't because she fears for her life."

"Yep. That's about right," Cassia confirmed.

"I still don't understand how she was able to get in here," Ib said. "The writing on Reyna Weiss' picture said this was a safe place."

"Maybe she meant from monsters, not Mary," Cassia provided.

"Or maybe Mary is getting stronger," Garry said.

"We have to get her back," Toby demanded. "If she dies… I don't know what I'll do. I'm already pretty sure my mom's gone, considering that Ib never found her parents after she got out. Holly needs me, and I need her."

"Trust me, Toby, we'll get her back," Cassia said. "I made her a promise that she'll make it out of here."

"The gallery has changed in the years since we've been here," Garry said. "It seemed to learn how to change itself. Make doors and hallways shift, make things disappear and reappear, things like that. The trials are different, maybe because we didn't come in through _Abyss of the Deep. _Also, Mary said she changed her hiding place, which means she isn't hiding in that sketchbook world anymore… not that we know how to get there anyway."

"So we have no leads?"

"Except for this," Toby lifted up Holly's blanket and took something out from underneath of it. It was a leaf of paper, burnt at the edges, and it was written on in orange crayon:

_Belle can't help me_

_But I still want her_

_And you need to find her_

_To find me_

"This is definitely from Mary," Garry said, taking the note from Toby. The page was brittle to the touch and the burned edges flaked off when he ran his hand over them. "The handwriting is the same. She defiantly found out she can't use Belle for this, but why does she still want her?"

Suddenly, there was a sound like claws scratching, or maybe like a pencil on granite. Everyone looked around, but it was Toby who finally pointed to the wall and said, "Look."

They flocked to the wall and leaned over to see what it said. It was written lightly in pencil and it was clearly from Belle:

_I know what she wants_

_Cassia, keep it hidden from sight_

_And meet me in the split room_

"Split room?" Adrian asked. "Where is that?"

"I have a feeling we're going to find out," Cassia said. "And judging from her ability to communicate with us, it must be close. Ib, do you still have that key?"

"Yeah," Ib pulled it out.

"Good, because we're leaving now," Cassia folded her blanket up and put it back, and the others followed her lead. "Everyone has all their petals on their roses? Everyone used the save station?"

"Yes and yes," Toby said, and everyone else nodded in agreement.

"Then we leave," Garry said, taking the key from Ib. The metal was cool in his hands as he stuck it into the lock and turned it. The lock clicked, and he pulled on the gilded doorknob to open it. The hallway led in two directions, and there was a painting in front of them as they filed out into the corridor.

"Look at what the plaque says," Ib went up to it and said, "It says, 'Left for decisions, right for the end'."

"I think we should go right," said Adrian. "It says 'for the end'. Maybe that means the end of the line. The exit. The way _out _of here."

"Or it means the 'end' as in 'dead'. Or as in 'trapped'," Ib retorted.

"I think we need to go left because it says 'left for decisions'," Cassia said.

"And?" Adrian asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"We need to go to the split room to find Belle," Cassia said. "Maybe 'split' and 'decisions' are the same thing."

"But this could be our chance to get us out," Adrian said, looking sternly at Cassia.

"Or we could get killed," Cassia said, looking sternly back.

"Are you implying that I'm _trying _to get us killed?" Adrian looked angry, but Toby pushed him back from Cassia.

"Whoa, Adrian," he said. "Cool down. Stop being such a Conspiracy Keanu."

"What does that even mean?"

"You people are technologically hopeless."

"I say," Ib said, "we go left."

"I agree with Ib," Garry said.

"I do as well," Cassia said.

"I still think we should go right," Adrian said.

"Well, you're overruled, because I'd rather be stuck in here with a psycho for all eternity then lose Holly," Toby said. "So left it is."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

They walked along the left side of the hallway and soon they came up to the end of it. At the end of the hallway was a huge set of stain glass doors with an ornate swirling design embedded in it. The doorknobs were glowing bronze and the frame was deep red wood. The air shimmered in front of them and the spirit form of Belle appeared in front of the doors.

"Belle!" Cassia exclaimed. "How are you able to be here?"

"I'm really not, which is why we don't have much time," She looked concerned. "When you go inside this room, you will be split. It will teleport you in two groups to different parts of the museum. There's no way around it, and you cannot communicate with each other besides big buttons that look like this," Her palm faced upwards and a projection flashed above it. It was a large circular button with a strange design on it. "This will randomly switch people around on your teams."

"Well this is a disaster," Adrian muttered.

"Is he constantly this negative?" Belle asked.

"Generally."

She shook her head. "Anyway, once you enter, you won't be able to choose who you're stuck with or where you go, so prepare yourselves."

Cassia nodded. "We will."

"Then I will let you go," Belle said. "Cassia, may I see my necklace?"

Cassia took the pendant out from inside her shirt. When she touched it, it glowed, but it seemed to glow brighter in the presence of its previous owner. "Here, I have it."

"Good. Do you know why I gave that to you, Cassia?"

"You told me to keep it safe," She absentmindedly fiddled with the snowflake's delicate contours.

"Yes, because I foresaw that Mary would want it," Belle said. "For her plan B, she needs Holly, but to bind herself to Holly, she needs and article from a pure spirit. A lock of hair, a ring… a necklace."

"So Mary won't possess Holly until she has this?" Cassia asked, holding up the pendant for emphasis.

"Which is why she still wants me," Belle said. "But she still doesn't know where I am or that you have it. She will be looking for me, so you have to get as far away from her as possible."

"What about our roses?" Garry asked, his hands stuck in his coat pockets.

"Mary has no need for them anymore," Belle said. "So you can be sure they are safe. She has hidden them somewhere – that much I could see," Her form began to flicker. "I have to go now. Be safe, everyone. You're on your own now."

And with that, she disappeared.

They stayed stationary, awestruck for a moment, then Toby spoke up and said, "Do you think we should go in now?"

"Yeah, Toby," Garry said. "We should."

He went up to the door, gripped the handles in his palms, and pulled both doors open. The room inside was pitch black as they walked in, and as soon as Cassia was engulfed in the darkness, the doors slammed shut behind her and cut of all light. Her sensory organs – her eyes, her ears – screamed for light or some kind of sound. There was a roaring around her and the floor fell out from under her. The room swirled and the darkness consumed her as she fell. She couldn't hear the others scream. She couldn't hear anything…

Until the lights slowly came back into view and Cassia felt her feet hit the floor. The new room was unfamiliar and suddenly her head spun and the floor rushed up to meet her and she blacked out.


	15. Chapter 15

**So, the Write-A-Thon has ended. So sad. So sorry. It might take me a little longer to update now. School's coming up, you know? Can't spend TOO much time on this. I will try though!**

**Now, I have something special for you. In every A/N from now on in celebration of being nearly halfway done this fanfiction I will put in something about myself. Favorite color, movie you name it, I'll say it. I want my fans to know me. **

**So, confession #1: I'm fourteen, ten months, and twenty days old (aka certifiably fifteen), but people say I think like a thirty year old. Now you have another fact to cram in your brain.**

**Now. I. Give. You. The. Great. Split!**

**R&R!**

The world was fuzzy, and Cassia felt the cold floor underneath of her for the first time. She was aware that the light had come back into her eyes, and it was a bit blinding. She blinked once, twice, and she began to hear a voice.

"Cassia?" The voice said, and someone shook her arm. "Cassia?"

"What?" Cassia sat up, propping herself up with her arm. She looked around as saw that sitting next to her was Garry, and his look was concerned and relieved at the same time.

"Oh thank God," Cassia was surprised when Garry pulled her into a hug. She was stiff for a minute, but hugged him back, and it was nice to feel the warmth of another person. Even if that other person was almost a head taller than her. "I thought you were dead. You took a nasty fall."

"Where are the others?" She asked, pulling back from him.

"We split up, remember?" He said. "The others are in some other part of the museum. I really hope they are okay."

"Yeah," Cassia said as Garry got up from the floor. He helped her back up, and her head was still a little woozy. "We should get going. Is that a door over there?"

They walked over to the door and Cassia pulled it open the hallway in front of them was dimly lit. It was lined with small paintings, all still works of Guertena. As they walked, the paintings became more obscure and more abstract. There was one that was titled "Good Boy" that was just a bunch of red and black splotches in a spiraling pattern. Another was titled "Spider" and was a boy playing with a gun, pointing it in the wrong direction.

"Wow," Cassia breathed. "This must have been done after his mental breakdown."

"I'd say definitely," he agreed. He looked around nervously and said, "I can see where Mary gets it from."

"I'm kind of curious to know the whole truth," Cassia said. "Belle only told me bits and pieces of it, so I can fill most of the holes. Mostly about why she needed us four here. I mean, I know why she ends Holly, but she didn't know that until after we were here."

"I know what you mean," Garry said. "When Ib and I were inside this place the first time, we didn't understand why we were here until the end. Mary wanted Ib to be her friend, and I just happened to be thrown in the mix… which is probably why she tried to kill me on more than one occasion."

"Maybe she only needed Holly and the three of us were mistakes," Cassia said.

"I don't think so this time," said Garry. "Maybe she knew that Holly couldn't make it through the gallery to her without help from people older than her."

"Ib did."

"Yeah, but I helped her most of the time, she was ten, and she's very versatile," He said with a smile. "That's my Ib."

"So she's not really your sister, right?"

"No, she's not," Garry said. "But I love her like one. No, her parents were trapped here… or so we think. When we got out of here, no one knew we existed. It was like someone took a huge, godly eraser and rubbed it right over us. I was able to pass for eighteen and I was able to 'adopt' Ib as my sister."

"You would be able to pass of for eighteen," Cassia poked his arm. "What are you, like six feet tall?"

"Give or take," he shrugged. "Anyway, we were sort of able to build our lives up again."

"I wish I could do that," Cassia sighed. "My parents are always gone. I've practically been an orphan since they dropped my sorry butt on the doorstep of some boarding school."

"You probably can," Garry said. "When Adrian said he was looking for you, they had no record of you. Your school didn't even have a record of you. Your parents probably don't even know they have a child."

That hit Cassia like a sack of bricks. She tried top sound as collected as possible when she said, "I don't care."

"Yes you do."

"No way. Don't care," Cassia shook her head. "I barely existed to them in the first place. This isn't any different for me. Besides, I have all you guys now. No doubt we'll keep in touch after this all is done. That's all the family I need. All the family I've ever needed."

"Let me tell you something," Garry stopped walking and Cassia stalled next to him. "Today is my birthday, you know."

"Pretty crappy way to spend your birthday."

"It's even worse because this will be the first one I've spent without my parents. They'd forgotten me and I couldn't go face them and look like a psycho insisting that I was their son. You know what's the worse feeling in the entire world?" he paused for an answer, and Cassia shook her head, "Going home to your own house and see that every memory of you has been erased. Every picture, every little drawing I made when I was little that my parents framed. All of it was gone. And now here I am, in this wretched place again, and I can't even celebrate being seventeen with my own family."

For that, Cassia had no words. Instead, she whispered, "My parents never framed my art."Garry opened his mouth, but Cassia continued, "They never took me on vacation. All the trips I'd ever taken were with my school, and only to the next state over. I was a mistake, the result of failed birth control. They didn't believe in abortion and they thought that they could handle balancing their bustling lives with raising me, but they couldn't. Not once did they ever seem like parents to me. I missed out on being loved by anyone."

"I'm sure they –"

"Sure they what?" Cassia snapped. "Sure they call once in a while to say 'Happy birthday!' or 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Hey Cassia, we still know you exist and we're proud of you!'? Because they barely even do, and it's only to reprimand me about a grade or to make sure I didn't trash the house or get pregnant or elope or something."

Garry didn't reply for a few moments as Cassia got her breathing under control. Finally she said after a few moments in a low tone, "Why am I even telling you this? You don't care. I barely know you. But I guess you just have that effect on people."

"What effect?"

"You kind of make me just want to open up," Cassia said.

"I do care," he said, and he sounded as sincere as possible. "Believe it or not, I have that effect on people for a reason. I believe that you can help people just by listening and relating."

"So you're a philosopher now?"

"More a philanthropist, but you were close in that they both start with 'p'," He smiled one of those smiles you'd usually give when you know a secret and someone else doesn't and nodded towards the end of the hall. "Now stop moping and start walking. I don't know about you, but I'm itching to see what's at the end of the hall."

"I never thought I'd ever hear a sane human being say that in this place," Cassia couldn't help but smile a little, even if it was repressed.

"What can I say? I'm curious," he led the way down the hall, and Cassia followed him.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Oof!" Holly landed on her brother when they fell, and both their lungs emptied of air. "Sorry Toby!"

"Ack! What have you been eating Holls?" Toby lifted her up off him and plopped her down next to him. Then suddenly, his mind clicked and he cried, "Holly!" he pulled her into a hug and said, "Where in the world were you?"

"I… I don't know," Holly looked puzzled. "I was dreaming, and then this girl appeared, and then… I can't remember, but I was falling and I ended up here."

"Did you get a good look at her?"

"No, I didn't," she said. "It was so cold, though, and I kept hearing this giggling…"

Toby and Holly shuddered, then Toby looked around and said, "Is that Adrian over there?"

On the floor over on the right side of the room was a tall dark heap. Toby rushed over and flipped him over. Holly said nervously, "Is he alive?"

In response, Adrian groaned and his eyes flew open. "Of course I'm alive," he sat up and shook his head, "Where are we?"

"The split took Cassia and Garry away to another part of the gallery," Toby explained. His vision was still topsy-turvy, but he'd gotten the nauseas spells under control. "We better get going if we want to find one of those buttons Belle showed us. There's bound to be one around here somewhere."

"Is that door unlocked?" He pointed across the room to the door. Toby hadn't even realized it was there until now. Adrian went over and turned the knob. The door opened, and it led into another room. He gestured in and said, "Come on. Let's get going."

Toby kept Holly close to him as they entered the room. The room was enormous and the walls were painted white. There was one window on the side. There was a scent in the air like paint fumes, and as soon as Adrian was clear from the door it swung shut. Adrian tugged at it hard, but it wouldn't budge. The knob wouldn't even turn. Holly panicked and clung to Toby's side, shaking.

"Look," She pointed forward, and there was, in the middle of the room, a tree. A giant tree made of thin plate metal. It was intricately carved and covered in paint, like someone had just painted its trunk and left for a few minutes to let it dry out. Holly detached herself from Toby's side and went up tot eh tree. She looked up, went on her tiptoes, reached her little fingers, and with a little snap she removed something from a branch. She showed it to Toby and said, "It's an apple."

And an apple it was. It was heavy like a paperweight and was made of shiny metal. It was spotless and unpainted, and the metal was cold as she put it in Toby's cupped hands. Adrian looked over his shoulder and said, "What are we supposed to do with it?"

His question was drowned out by a pounding that came at the door. Toby's blood turned to ice in his veins as the pounding got louder. The door vibrated with ever knock, and as they became more aggressive the wood began to splinter.

"Uh oh," Toby said.

"_Fooooood….." _A moan came from outside. _"Fooooooooooooooooood…."_

And then the door exploded into a shower of splinters inward. Holly shrieked as a creature emerged from behind the wreckage of the door. It was unlike anything Toby had ever seen before. It was a painting, but it had someone coming out of it. The person who was waist deep in the painting was a woman with sandy hair and a yellow dress, and her face was ravenous. Her teeth were sharp like a piranha's and her eyes were fathomless, completely black and beady, and shined with bloodlust.

"_FOOOOD!" _It tore across the floorboards with its fingers, the nails bleeding from the effort. It came straight for Tob y, and he fled to the other side of the room.

"What_ is _that thing?" Adrian cried, running away from it. He took Holly and dragged them away from it, which was still going after Toby.

Suddenly, there was a banging on the window. _Oh no, _Toby thought just as another painting creature crashed through the window. She had a blue dress on this time, but that didn't make her look any less menacing.

"You have GOT to be kidding me," Toby muttered as they closed in on him slowly.

"I think they want the apple!" Holly said.

"Well that I've already figured that out, but there's only one apple!" Toby yelled.

"Break it then!" Adrian barked.

Toby pried at the apple, but his fingers slipped on the surface and he couldn't find any notches or seams or buttons. Meanwhile, the women were closing in like a panther on their prey. They were practically clawing at his feet and his heart was bounding in his throat when Holly yelled, "Throw it to me!"

"Are you crazy? No!"

"Just do it you big sissy! I have an idea!" She cried. Toby was reluctant, but he threw it to her anyways. She caught it and waved it over her head, making sure the paintings knew she had it. They turned around and advanced towards her.

She did something strange after they came closer. She threw it, but not to any one of them in particular; she made it so it landed in front of their faces. They looked at it for a moment, then at each other with their big black eyes, and both lunged for it at the same time. They shrieked as they both clawed for it, and they scratched at each other, tearing at their eyeballs and at their hair and their canvas, until all that was left of their scuffle were two frames, some torn canvas, and a glimmering iron apple.

"I can't believe a seven year old thought of that," Adrian muttered incredulously.


	16. Chapter 16

**So, guess what guys?**

**I'M BAAAAAAAACK!**

**I am so sorry for taking forever to update. I've been working on a new idea for myself and it's promising. Angels chaos, love, and Armageddon, anyone? So anyway, it's nice to be back. School is proving to be hell. It's fun, but so insanely busy. My schedule is packed between homework, dance class, fall play, and writing, I seriously have no room to breathe. AND I have pop vocals tryouts on Friday, AAAAND my voice Is jacked up. Great. I swear, if I had a boyfriend and still did sports, my brain would have exploded long before now. **

**Confession #2: I love the color purple because it's the color of royalty, power, and romance (mostly the royalty and power part). Stick that in your hard drive.**

**So, rate and review! Thanks to all the people who have been following The Four! You guys are the best!**

Air couldn't fill Cassia's lungs fast enough as she slowed down, huffing and gulping in oxygen. Garry slammed the door behind them, his face drained of all color. He looked ready to pass out. There was pounding at the door and Cassia braced her back against the door under Garry's arm, keeping them from busting in.

"Damn, those things are strong," Garry breathed as the door wood buckled under the fists of the things outside.

Cassia and Garry didn't have a prayer when they left the room where they'd split from the rest of the group. When they got to the end of the hallway, they were immediately surrounded by headless statues, all dressed in either red, blue, or yellow dresses. They walked like Frankensteins, but they weren't slow. Garry and Cassia had to crack some heads (or lack thereof) to get away. The halls were almost mazelike, and they were relieved that they could find a door… which was locked. Garry had the bright idea of kicking it in, which worked surprisingly, but now they were trapped, the lock was busted, and the wood of the door was compromised.

"What do we do?" Cassia's expression was pleading.

"I don't know," he said, and Cassia could see he was wracking his brain for options. "How many petals do you have left?"

"Four," she was sure of it. She could feel it somehow without even looking at it. The scratches lining her arms indicated it, too. "You?"

"Three," he grimaced. He groaned and pushed up against the door, which was opening slightly. Cassia saw a few fingers pry through and they were now curled around the wood. The nails were long and pointed. "And dropping."

"We can't do this forever," she pushed harder with her shoulder.

"What can we do?"

"How many are there?" she asked.

"How am I supposed to know?"

"Check!"

"Are you insane!?" he looked at her like she'd grown a second head. Another push came at the door, and Cassia's feet slid a little. _I am so happy I wore sneakers today, _she thought as she repositioned herself.

"Please?"

Garry bit his lip, then moved away from the door slightly. The door opened a little, and he peered through the crack. Suddenly, a hand lashed out towards his face, and he recoiled with a cry and pushed the door back. The hand was snapped off and fell into the room with them. It flopped for a moment, then was still.

"Don't EVER make me do that again, Cassia," he looked terrified. "There are about six. Well, like five and ten twelfths since we snapped the hand off that one."

Cassia cursed under her breath. They could never take that many without a weapon. Her eyes locked on the hand on the ground, and she realized that it was completely devoid of color. The ends were chipping like chalk, and she had a realization.

"Garry! When they fall apart, they die!" she cried.

"So how do we get them in pieces?"

"Just follow my lead," she said. "When I say 'open', open the door. When I say 'close', close the door, okay?"

"Okay."

"Ready?"

He nodded. "Ready."

"Open!" she let the weight from behind her out a little and two arms poked in, prying about and clawing at the walls. Soon, a third popped in, and she cried, "Close!" They both pushed against it, and dust and chips rained down on them as the three arms were chopped off.

"Open!"

"Close!"

"Open!"

"Close!"

Soon, the floor was littered with crumbling appendages, and Cassia's hair was covered in chalky dust. The force on the other side of the door was lessening with every slam, every crack. Eventually, the pounding came to a stop, and Cassia was breathing hard as she slid to the floor. Garry joined her, hugging his knees to his chest.

"Are they gone?" she coughed, and a puff of dust left her lungs.

He peeked through the keyhole and sat back looking like a huge weight was taken off his shoulders, "Yeah."

Relief flooded Cassia and she said, "That was…"

"Scary?"

"Terrifying," she said, and without thinking about it, she leaned against him and put her head on his chest. She felt him tense, but he relaxed after a second, and she was thankful to have another human being there. If she didn't, and she was alone in the gallery, she may well have gone insane.

After a minute of them just sitting like that quietly, he said, "Last time I held someone in this damned gallery, it was Ib. She was just about ready to give up."

"You love her, don't you?"

"Like a sister," he said, and she felt him wrap his arm around her waist. It felt nice, and Cassia could feel herself begin to feel lighter. Suddenly, an image of Adrian popped into her head, which shocked her. _Why in the world would I be comparing Garry to Adrian? _She pushed the thought away and moved away. He looked down at her, concern crossing his face, and asked, "Are you okay?"

"Fine," she composed herself and stood up, shaking the dust out of her hair. "We have to get moving. Who knows how many friends those things could have coming our way?"

Garry nodded and stood up too. He kicked away the debris as they made their way back to the door. Cassia kept stealing glances at Garry, who looked deep in thought. She briefly felt fluttery inside and looked away. _What the hell is going on?_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"This is getting weirder and weirder by the minute," Holly muttered as they entered a vast room.

The room was long and wide… or so Holly thought. She could see a gap between the walls and the ceiling and there was a fork in the hall up ahead of them. As she looked around, she somehow knew that they were in the beginnings of a maze.

"This is a maze," Toby picked up on it too.

"How do we get through it?" Adrian asked.

"I don't know," Ib said. "I encountered one like that in my last pass through here, and it was crawling with creepy things. Mostly those statues, which are some of the creepiest."

"Let's check it out," Toby suggested, and they ventured into the maze.

After a while of wandering left and right, forwards and backwards, they came to a large clearing. In the center of the far wall there was a door. Adrian went up to it and tugged on it, but it was locked. He looked around and said, "This needs a key."

"Duh," Toby said. "But where?"

"Somewhere in this maze," Ib said, moving backwards slowly, as if she was in a trance. Her eyes were glazed over and she spoke like she was on another planet. "I… I have to go."

She turned on her heel and sprinted into the maze. She turned a corner, and was gone from sight. Holly was the first to recover and shrieked, "Ib!"

Toby was close behind her as she tore into the maze, following the sound of Ib's footsteps. They mingled with Adrian's, who was now following them, and soon Holly couldn't see Ib's long brown hair whip around the corners anymore. Adrian was running in the other direction; that much she could tell. Holly stopped and looked around frantically. She could no longer feel Toby's hand in hers. She couldn't even see Toby. Her body racked with spasms, fear coursing through her veins. She could barely move her mouth to speak.

"Toby?" she said weakly. "Ib? Adrian?"

She turned around and ran down the hallway. The walls were white and blended together in her vision. She felt trapped, like a lab rat. She clutched the end of her dress and leaned against the wall, huffing and puffing. The fear was paralyzing. Soon, though, she heard footsteps coming from behind her. _Toby! _ She thought with glee, but there was something wrong. These footsteps were heavier. Like… stone. Her heartbeat quickened as the footsteps grew closer. She turned slowly and came face to face with a tall, thin statue in a yellow dress. There was no head, and it was coming straight for her.

Holly screamed.


	17. Chapter 17

**Hello my pretties. Me again!**

**So, Mark of Athena has five days to go until it comes out. I literally have no words for this. Only my mom won't drive me up to Paramus to go to Rick Riordan's book signing (it's only 65 miles…).**

**Well anyways, confession #3: If I had to equate the characters of The Four with characters from other things, it would be as follows – Adrian would be like Tack, Holly like Angel, Toby like Simon pre-vampire, Ib like a young Tessa, Garry like a cross between Iggy and Tamaki, and Cassia like a cross between Max and Clary. I apologize if some people don't know who these people are. And as you can see, I'm as big a book freak as a gamer, maybe bigger.**

**Thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far. You guys have been really reliable; kudos to all y'all! Plus, I am seriously surprised by the amount of fourteen and fifteen year olds on this site. I thought I was one of the only ones, especially going a gamer fiction.**

**Well, that's enough jibber-jabber from me. Here ya go! Chapter… 17? Yeah. I lost count for a second there. This is definately my favorite chapter so far. It's getting very Ib-esque now. Creepy… Ciao!**

"Do you miss them?" Cassia broke the bubble of silence that separated her and Garry as they walked down the seemingly endless pink hall. The walls were lined with lacy white painted-on flowers and the pictures were of baby cats and puppies and toys. It was like they'd stepped into a child's playroom, which was eerie.

"Miss who?" Garry asked. His thumbs were in the pockets of his jeans and he was nervously fiddling with a thread sticking out from behind a rivet.

"Your parents," she said.

"I thought we'd been over this," he said.

"I need a distraction," she said quietly, her eyes not leaving the floor in front of her. "This place is starting to take its toll… besides, you only said you were upset when they didn't remember you."

"Okay," Garry gave a small, airy laugh. "Well, my mom was nice, and she had a really bubbly persona. She was a model when she was younger, but then she met my dad and… well, you know the rest. My dad was an architect, but he was really serious. Every now and again he would crack a joke, and his smile would make you melt."

"They sound like good people," Cassia said.

"Yeah, they were," Garry said, his expression sad. "But I don't miss them half as much as I miss her."

"Her?" Cassia was puzzled.

"My sister," he said with a grimace.

"You had a sister?" Cassia was shocked. "Does Ib know?"

"She does. She knows what she looks like from pictures I keep, but she's never met her, or my parents," Garry said. "She was like my best friend. I'm a little less than a year older then her. Right after my mom got me out of the oven, she started baking her up, so to say."

"What was she like?" Cassia was genuinely interested.

"Her name was Elizabeth, but I called her Elle. She looked like a spitting image of my mother," he said. "As you can see, I got a lot of my dad's traits. He was a real character. Who else would have hair like mine?"

"It's not THAT funny looking," Cassia insisted. "My uncle has green hair."

"Green hair?"

"It's completely possible."

"Clearly," he said. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, his head tilting upwards slightly. Cassia went back to him and looked at him strangely.

"Garry?" she said, but he shushed her and turned his head.

"I know that sound," he said.

"What sound? Garry, you're scaring me."

"Listen!" he hissed, and Cassia complied. The silence was thick, but she heard it now; a little shuffle, a sound like cloth on floor. It was scratchy, like old fabric, and it was small. The temperature dropped, Cassia could feel that much, and soon she could see her breath. Instinctively, she moved closer to Garry, who was trying not to look scared.

The sound grew closer behind them, and neither of them dared move. Cassia whispered, "What is that?"

Slowly they turned around. Cassia looked out, expecting to see a painting woman crawling towards her with her sharp claws or one of the statue ladies with no head and a bad case of bloodlust. But she saw none of those things. In fact, she saw nothing in front of her.

It wasn't until she looked down that she saw the little blue doll with red eyes and unruly hair staring up at her.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Toby sprinted until his legs were ready to give out underneath of him. He breathed in shallow breaths, praying for the pain to stop, and as he leaned against the wall with quivering knees all he could think about was Holly. He made a promise to his mother to never let go of her hand. He wouldn't break that promise. The thought of his mother made his chest ache, and that wasn't only because of his lack of air. When he got out of there, he would find his mother. But right now he needed to find Holly. He had to, or he would never forgive himself.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Adrian was alone, like he always had been since he was little. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to turn another corner. Again, another wall met his vision, and he cried out in frustration. _Everything looks the same! _He felt like tearing his hair out. All the while, he couldn't stop thinking about Cassia. He'd only known her a short time, but there was something about her that made Adrian long to know who she was. Did she feel the same way about him? He was sure of it, even if she tried to hide it, he could see. He'd seen so many girls do it before on his account. But he never felt like this about them. _Focus, Adrian, _he gave himself a mental slap in the face. _If you get too distracted, you'll never see her again. You'll die in this godforsaken maze. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going…_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ib didn't know what possessed her to run into the maze and lose her friends, but she knew where she needed to be. Everything seemed so familiar now. Everything was clicking. Falling into place. However you wish to say it. She turned another corner, and before her sitting on her pedestal was a red key. She ran over to it and grabbed it off the stone table. The metal was cold in her palm, but she had little time to revel in her success. She had a door to unlock and some friends to find… and maybe a few more keys.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_Pain… so much pain… _Holly ran as fast as her small legs could carry her, the statue in hot pursuit. As she turned endless corners, her mind began to blur the lines between what was real and wasn't. As she heard the heavy but still swift footsteps of the statue behind her, tears streamed down her face. Suddenly, she began to hear other footsteps ahead of her; light, flitting footsteps, like that of a child's. A bell-like laugh rang through the walls, and as Holly turned another corner, she saw a swath of blonde hair whip around a corner, followed by incessant giggles. _This can't be real… This can't be real… Help me, Toby… _the room stated to spin and a red haze played at the ends of her vision. She felt like she couldn't breathe. The giggling grew louder. _Where is it coming from?_ Then she tripped over her dress.

She crashed to the floor, skidding a bit. Scraped opened up on her arms and pain shot through her forehead. She tried to scramble up, but she felt a stony hand close around the back of her dress. She screamed at the top of her lungs as the hands tore at her skin, opening up more gashes. She scrambled to get away, but the hands of the statue left bruises whenever she struggled. She felt blood run down her arms and all she could so was claw and sob. With a _r-r-r-ip, _the hem of her dress tore away, and that little inch of fabric freed her from the grip of the statue. She practically fell again as she sprinted away, holding her arms and screaming. She heard the statue go in a different direction, and she practically cried in relief. She ran as far away from the thing as she could, and as soon as the heavy steps were out of earshot, she collapsed on the ground, the walls whooshing around her, massacring her mind with hallucinations. She felt the energy leave her body as she laid down, her mind on the brink of unconsciousness.

The last thing she saw before she slipped into the black, were two big blue eyes framed by golden hair leaning into her vision. The girl leaned over her with a wide, innocent grin. The last thing she heard?

"It's okay," the voice was like an angel's. "You're safe with me, Holly."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Garry was petrified.

Completely and utterly petrified.

He grabbed the wall for support as he looked into the red eyes of the doll that seemed to mock him. _Take me… TAKE ME… _The memories pried at his subconscious until he thought his ears would bleed. _Key... key… I need to find the key… it hurts… stop… red eyes…. Big red eyes… claws…. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, NO! _He moved back a few steps, his face twisted into a horrified expression, and turned on his heel and booked down the hall.

Cassia didn't call after him or make a fuss, she simply followed him. Once he got to the end of the hall and turned the corner, his heart stopped. There the doll was again, staring him down. It had taken Garry almost six months to erase the mother doll from his dreams and longer for the scars to fade enough to stop wearing jackets over his arms even in the summer, and now everything was coming back to haunt him. He stopped, his lungs deflating and just stared at the doll as if to say, _why me?_

Cassia caught up to him, her bag swinging against her leg. She was looking at the doll, too.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked. Garry was glad she didn't ask what was wrong or why he had to get away from it, sparing him more hurt by explaining.

He simply needed to answer, "Yeah."

She nodded and said, "Let's keep going."

They walked past the doll and down the hall again. Once more, they were met by another blue doll. Garry was less frightened this time because he knew what this was leading to. Doll after doll after doll, always in their path. Until finally…

"There's something written on the wall," Cassia pointed to above the fourth doll they've seen.

She's right; above the doll's head there were the words:

_GUESS WHO GAVE ME THIS PAINT?_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ib couldn't unlock the door with her key. Frustrated, she jammed it in at all angles, pushing at the door with her heel and using it for leverage as she forced it in, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't open it. She looked around, but the only way out was to retrace her steps. She groaned in frustration, but turned around and escaped back into the maze anyways. She needed to find another key.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It seemed to be written in jagged letters, in dripping red paint. _This is definitely NOT Belle's handwriting… _Cassia looked closer and instinctively reached out and touched the wall. The paint came off on her fingers, but something wasn't right. It's thinner, and stained her fingers as it dripped off. Cassia shrieked and flung the substance off her fingers.

"Its blood!" she can barely breathe.

"That's impossible," Garry said, but as he looked at Cassia's fingertips, he knew she was right.

"Who's is this?" Cassia's voice trembled.

"It could be no one's. This place tampers with your mind," Garry tried to assure her, but Cassia would have nothing of it.

"Come on," Cassia moved along, not even waiting for Garry to comply. _What if someone's hurt? Or worse? _Cassia rushed down the hall, and meets another doll. This doll has another blood inscription above its head:

_WILL YOU TAKE ME SOMEWHERE? WE CAN PAINT TOGETHER._

This one made Cassia shiver. She waited for Garry to catch up before they moved on to the next one. Garry seemed less shaken then before, which concerned Cassia. Had this happened before? She was now dying to have his knowledge of this place. They soon came across the sixth doll, and the writing was equally strange:

_WHY DON'T YOU STOP?_

Soon, they came around a corner, and there was a door at the end. The sight of it made Cassia want to throw up. The door was covered in dried blood, the writing still clear. The knob was drenched in blood, dried as well. Seated on the floor in the corner next to the door was the seventh doll. _Or is it the same doll in the seventh place? _Cassia wondered. The writing on the door stated:

_JUST THIS ONCE._

Cassia forced herself to move her legs forward. Garry put a hand on her shoulder, as if to say, _you don't have to. _But Cassia knew she did. This was the only option. Her heart felt like it was going to burst with anticipation as she laid her hand on the blood-soaked doorknob. There was no going back. Whatever was behind the door was something they needed to see or do to get out. She turned the knob and pushed the door open.

The room inside was dimly lit. It was empty, devoid of any paintings or statues or monsters, and the floor was bare… save one thing. A small, blood stained body in the middle of the floor, in a pool of their own blood. The hem of her dress was ripped and she wasn't moving.

Cassia's eyes rolled back in her head and Garry caught her just before she fell.

"Holly…" she whispered before black immersed her vision.


	18. Chapter 18

**I almost cried writing that last chapter. I swear :( There's only one song that I could listen to while writing this: 42 by Coldplay. **

**Anyways, I was phone shopping today. I hate data plans. They're too expensive. Technology is a blessing and a burden. Which is why all I want for my birthday is art supplies, GameStop and Barnes & Noble gift cards, and for my parents to start buying more chocolate. **

**So about the story. How do you guys like it so far? I have to say I've had the best time writing this and I've become attached to every single character in this. I can't pick a favorite! At least not without there being a tie. I don't think I have the heart to kill anyone off… yet :)**

**Confession #4: I love old things. History, antiques, and all that jazz. If it happened between the Minoans and the turn of the 20****th**** century, I love it. Oh, and also, I'm a girl. I'm setting the record straight. **

**Well that's enough from me. I'm going to save you all, because last I remember you were hanging over the side of a cliff. This is a rather long chapter, so get comfortable. **

**Review!**

Cassia wrapped Holly up in her arms, sobbing. She'd awoken a few moments after she passed out, only to find that she was still in the gallery, and Holly was still there, lying in her own blood, and Garry was just being strong because Cassia wasn't. She couldn't possibly be strong. Not after this.

"Come on, Holly," she said, brushing Holly's blood-matted hair back from her forehead. She was pale, and she wasn't breathing. She was certainly not coming to anytime soon. "Don't leave me. I saved you once, I'll do it again. I'll do it a million times. Toby needs you. Please don't die…"

Garry hadn't said a word, he just knelt beside Cassia while she rocked, holding Holly in her arms. Blood covered her shirt, but she didn't care. _I can't lose her… I can't lose her…_

"Cassia…"

"What?" she squeaked.

"She's not coming back," he said as calmly as he could.

"No. She'll come back," Cassia insisted. "She has to."

He was silent once more as she leaned over Holly's small form, her tears dried up. She ran her hand over the gashes on her arms, dripping blood to the floor. A bump formed on her forehead, and bruises lined her arms. She looked like an angel that fell from heaven, only to be beaten and scarred by humanity. Cassia's heart lurched, and she bit on her fist to keep from crying again. She felt a small bulge in her dress pocket, and she slipped her hand inside and took out the object. It was the stem of a rose, attached to the bud of it. Petals fell out of her pocket as she drew it out. Cassia gasped and realized something: _We can save her. We just need water…_

But there was none. The room was barren, and she would be dead before they could find another vase. She howled in frustration, and Garry opened his mouth to say something, but she held up a finger, indicating him to wait. She leaned over Holly and put her ear to her chest. She listened hard, and suddenly she heard the small, faint, dying beat of a heart. She hadn't noticed it before, but she was breathing quickly and shallowly, but she breathed nonetheless.

And suddenly Cassia had a plan.

"Garry, take her," she transferred Holly into his arms, where she hung limply. He propped her head up and held her like you would hold a baby. He looked down at her with a broken expression.

She didn't answer him. She yanked the flap of her bag open and fished around for a paintbrush. She finally found one big enough and pulled it out, along with a tube of paint she had. Before she left school, she had contemplated not bringing the paint, since in the gallery she would only be allowed to draw, and now she was thankful she'd brought it. She uncapped the paint tube and squeezed a dollop onto her palm, using it as a crude palate. She ran over to the wall and Garry looked at her strangely.

"What are you _doing?" _he lifted an eyebrow.

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Just keep talking to Holly; keep her here," Cassia assured him.

"Whatever you're doing, do it fast," he nodded.

Cassia slathered the paintbrush with paint, then began to paint on the wall. She recalled what the vase looked like, or at least its slight shape, and traced it's design. _Fat, thin, fat, _she made the design, then came around and drew it again, leaving the top open. Inside she drew what could be interpreted as water. She didn't have time to be intricate. She worked to add as much detail as possible, and when she was finished she stepped backwards. The wall shimmered a bit, then she reached her hand towards the wall, and her hand passed _through _it.

Her hand closed around cool glass and as she drew her fisted hand out she almost cried in relief. She was holding a glass vase, about half full with water. _It worked! I can't believe it! _She rushed over to Garry, who was looking at her like she'd just dropped out of the sky.

"How did you…?"

"Give me her rose! Quickly!" he handed her Holly's rose. The little yellow petal was withering as the seconds passed and the life ebbed out of Holly. She put it in the vase and prayed, her hands tightening around the neck of the vase. She shut her eyes and held her breath, and soon she heard a little cough as the water glowed and petals formed on Holly's rose again. Garry breathed a sigh of relief as the gashes on Holly's arms began to heal over, and her chest rose and fell, stronger this time. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Garry?" she said meekly. She looked over to Cassia. "Cassia?"

"it's okay, honey," Cassia was crying again. "You're okay."

Tears rolled down Holly's face too, and she said, "Was I dead?"

"Almost, Holly," Cassia couldn't bring herself to lie to her. Holly was smarter than that. "What happened to you? When we left Reyna's room, you were gone How did you end up here, and how did you get wounded like that?"

"I don't know how I left Reyna's room, but during the split, I just kind of… appeared. Or at least, that's what Toby told me. I was traveling with Ib, Toby, and Adrian, and we got into this maze. There was a locked door, and suddenly Ib went back into the maze, almost in a trance. We all went in after her, but every one of us got separated, and I got chased by a statue… it got me and gave me these," she looked down at her arms and gasped. "My cuts! They're gone!"

Cassia held up the vase. 'Remembered when I painted that door, back when it was just you and me? I did the same thing and came up with a vase for your rose. I'm not going to lie… it was touch and go for a while."

"I told you that you were magic," she smiled for the first time since she'd woken up.

"It was incredible," Garry said, half to himself.

"There was another thing," Holly turned back to Cassia. "Before I blacked out… I don't know if it was real… Nothing seemed real in that maze…"

"What?" Garry prompted.

"I think I saw Mary," Holly shuddered.

"What? When?" Cassia was shocked.

"When I was running from the statue, I kept hearing her giggle. I heard it when I disappeared from Reyna's room too. I could see her turn corners, and when I lost the statue and blacked out, she was there, and the last thing I heard before I went under was… was…"

"Yes?"

"'You're safe with me, Holly'," Holly buried her face in Garry's coat. "I don't know what happened between then and now."

"Are you okay to stand up?" Garry helped her up, and she held a little hand to her forehead. The bump was growing smaller.

"Yeah, I think so," Holly took a few steps towards Cassia and gave her a hug. "I was really scared, Cassia. I was all alone."

"I was scared for you," Cassia stroked her hair.

But Cassia couldn't quite shake the thought that Mary did something with holly before she returned her. _Just this once… is this some kind of mind game? _Cassia thought. She knew that it was Holly's blood on the walls. And from what she knew, it was in Mary's handwriting. Mary had access to Holly long before Cassia and Garry did, and whatever she did to her, it couldn't be good.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Ib?" Ib was surprised to hear a voice behind her. The first one she'd heard since she'd gone into the maze, actually. She turned around and saw Toby running towards her. His glasses were tucked in his pocket, and Ib could see that they were cracked. He had a few scratches on his face, but nothing too severe. What had happened?

"Toby?" she said as he stopped in front of her. "Where's Holly? And Adrian?"

"I lost Holly in the maze. Adrian, too," Toby's expression was worrisome. "I've been trying to track Holly, don't but I can't find her no matter what I do. I did find something, though."

"What?"

He held out his hand, and in his palm was a blue key. It looked like Ib's red one. "It was on a pillar sometime back. It might go to the door we saw."

"I found a red one like that," she fished around in her pocket and brought out the key she'd found. "The reason I ran into the maze is because I remembered exactly where to go to find this key. I did it last time I was here. Thing might have changed a bit, but it's good that we have more than one."

"But that also means that there's more than one door."

"Yes, it does," Ib nodded.

"Which means we're going to have to choose. Again."

"True again."

"We should try to find Adrian first," Toby said. "And Holly."

Ib agreed, and they went back into the maze.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Oh great," Garry muttered as they reached the end of the hallway.

The hall stretched in two directions, but it was as big as a room. The floor was tiled in all directions with different colors and patterns. Some were flowers, some umbrellas, some sunbursts, stars, faces, wands, trees, etc. On the far side of the wall, there was an abstract picture of delicate swirls and flourishes. The tiles were about a foot by a foot, and the three closest to them were in three colors: red, blue and yellow.

"Last time we had a red, blue, and yellow anything together…" Garry shook his head. "It was Ib, Mary, and I. How the times have changed."

"What are we supposed to do?" Holly asked.

"I have a feeling," Cassia stepped onto the red tile, and it as soon as she put her full weight on the tile, it sank into the floor about a half inch.

Suddenly, there was a grinding sound and leading from her tile, the tiles began to flip over, one by one. Garry counted one, two, three tiles up, and one to the right. She looked back at them and prompted them to do the same. Garry stood on his, and so did Holly, but their didn't do the same thing. Garry's went up only two, and Holly's went up one, then over one, then up one, then over one again. The tiles had letters on them. It was neither in Mary nor Belle's handwriting:

_HELP IS HERE_

"What does that mean?" Holly asked.

"I don't know," Garry said.

He took a tentative step forward, and followed his path to the end. He stepped forward off the "I" in "IS" and onto the tile in front of it. The tile sank into the ground, and there was a sound like metal on stone. Cassia looked up and screamed, "Garry! _Look out!"_

Garry barely had time to step back before a huge blade dropped from the ceiling. It grazed by his nose, missing him by inches, and he fell back onto the "S". The blade retracted back into the ceiling, and Garry looked up. The tiles on the floor exactly matched the ones on the ceiling. Which meant…

"If we make a wrong step, something bad happens," Garry's words returned to him as soon as his heart stopped pounding. "And I don't think it's going to be a blade next time."

"So how do we know which tiles we can step on?" Cassia asked, her face as pale as his.

"Well, I don't think we can move diagonally, which leaves three options for all of us," Garry said. "Forward, left, or right. So there's a two in three chance we'll be wrong. One in two for me right now, since I know it's certainly not front."

"I hate those odds," Holly squeaked.

"And what do they mean by, 'Help is here'?" Cassia asked.

"There must be a clue in this room," Garry looked around.

"Could the painting have something to do with it?" Cassia provided.

"Maybe," Holly said. "But it looks like a bunch of scribbles."

"It's abstract," Cassia retorted. "You need to look at it through an artist's perspective."

"What does it look like to you, then?" Garry said.

She looked at the picture again, then took a shaky step to the right (front for her but right for Garry). The tile sunk down and she flinched, but nothing happened. Instead, tiles flipped out from there once more, and Cassia looked relieved. They went in a straight line to the right. There weren't words on these tiles.

"How did you do that?" Garry asked.

"See that little red swirl?" she pointed to the picture. He saw it; it was almost too small to see, but he did. "Well, there's a line coming straight from there, and a line that looks like it's going right."

"Hm," Garry was impressed.

"That blue swirl? I'm pretty sure that's you. And that yellow blob is Holly," Cassia said.

"I still can't believe you can see that," Garry shook his head.

"Maybe Guertena intended for an artist to interpret it," Holly said.

"Garry, try going left," Cassia said.

Garry stepped to the left, and it worked. The tiles flipped out to the right and he counted about eight. It intersected Holly's tiles, so when he reached her, she was able to join him on his tiles, which shifted to be two wide so they could both walk to the end. It was like the gallery knew everything they were about to do. It was completely creepy.

"Now what?" Garry said.

"I have to get over there," Cassia said, looking back at the painting. "We just have to keep paying attention to the painting."

So they did. Eventually, they all made it onto the same platform, and the path was three wide. They kept following the obscure directions on the abstract piece of Guertena's artwork until they could see regular flooring at the end. At points, they strayed so far from the painting that Cassia would have to retrace her steps to go back and look at the painting for instructions. Garry was paranoid every time that happened, because there was always the chance she would accidentally step off the path. He always seemed to remain calm on the outside, though, which was handy because he has his cowardly moments every now and again.

Garry was finally able to feel safe when they got off the tiles at the other end of the long room. There was a door in front of them, and when they were all safely across the sea of dangerous tiles, Garry said, "Everyone in one piece? No limbs missing?"

"Nope," Cassia said.

"All here," Holly piped up.

"Well," Garry stepped away. "Ladies first."

Cassia smiled as she passed by him to open the door. But that relief was short lived, because staring her down were two huge red eyes that belonged to a massive blue face with stitches on the mouth and matted black hair. Like the dolls they saw in the hallway, but bigger. So much bigger.

She screamed as the creature roared and clawed forward, bloodlust in its eyes.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Adrian lurched forward and grabbed the key off the pedestal. He looked at it in his hand, pondering what it could go to. It was purple, like his rose, and the metal was cold, like no one had touched it in a while. His fingers curled around it and he shoved it into his pocket. Maybe it went to something. _The door, maybe? _He didn't know. He turned around and went down the hallway. Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming from behind him. _No way. Not another one of those things. _

"Adrian!"

_Wait. Statues don't talk. _"Ib?"

Ib and Toby rushed around the corner and Toby said, "Thank God. Have you seen Holly around here? What about a key? We need one more."

"No to Holly, but I did find a key," Adrian said.

Toby's face darkened, but Ib said, "Well, it's good you found the key. Have you seen another door besides the one we found?"

"No," he said.

"Then these three keys must open that one door. We just needed to have them all," Toby said.

They tried to retrace their steps as best they could, but it still took them a while to find the door again. This time, Adrian, Toby, and Ib all had their keys. While they were gone, somehow two new locks had appeared. _Now they show up… _Adrian thought with a snort. Adrian took his out of his pocket and gave it to Ib, and Toby did the same. She stuck the blue one into the first lock, but it didn't work. She tried the others, and it fit in the third. Then she did the same with the other two, finding which one they fit in.

"They should be color coded," Ib muttered, and Adrian chuckled under his breath,

She turned them all, starting with the first and working her way down, when she was done, the knob turned by itself and the door swung open. The corridor in front of them was dimly lit, and as they stepped in, Adrian noticed something on the floor and stopped Ib and Toby before they could step forward.

The floor was covered in tiles.

And they weren't alone.


	19. Chapter 19

**The story has become twice as twisted. It's official. I may just have nightmares about my own writing, it wouldn't be the first time 0.o**

**I'm sorry to say that this story will be winding to a close soon, but I'm not ending without a bang! What will that be? A lady never kisses and tells. Well, unless you're at a sleepover squealing about how "OMG I totally kissed him" and everyone else is like "OMG give me the deets!" Not at my sleepovers though. We usually just watch Monty Python.**

**Confession #5: Every time I write a scary gallery scene, I have to listen to Thriller/Heads Will Roll by the Glee Cast. Gets me in the horror mood :) **

**Oh, and awesome news! Between September and August, this story has been viewed in the United States, Canada, the UK, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, India, Australia, Poland, Spain, Hong Kong, Portugal, Germany, Norway, Indonesia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Chile, and Saudi Arabia. Thanks to everyone who's supported this story, international or not. You guys are fantastic! **

**So, where were we? Big blue monster? Tiled floor? I won't keep you in suspense any longer.**

**Review please! Thanks!**

Her claws missed Cassia's face by inches, and she almost fell into Garry running away from it. It tore across the floor, leaving wide gashes where it hauled itself forward, like a possessed demonic _thing. _It cried out as Cassia grabbed Holly's hand and they hauled ass back the way they came. The momma doll was strong and menacing, but it wasn't fairly fast. _I wouldn't be either, if all I had to propel myself forward were my hands, _Cassia managed to process the thought before she went into full-on panic mode again. Garry looked about ready to pass out as he scrambled back from the huge doll, and as it locked eyes with him, it's grin grew wider. It was a horrible grin that said, _remember me? _Cassia didn't yet know what Garry had been through the last time he was in the gallery, but she had a feeling this wasn't the first time he'd encountered her. Between the dolls in the hall terrifying him so much and this, he must have been there before.

They walked backwards until they were on the edge of the end of the tile platform that was safe to stand on. They were trapped, and the momma doll was slowly but surely making her way across the floor, her stumpy legs dragging uselessly behind her. Holly screamed and moved closer to Cassia, and she hugged her close. Garry looked too frozen to speak, and for the hundredth time that day, Cassia thought, _this is it. _She believed it too.

That's before she heard the voices behind her.

"Cassia!" she turned around and saw that Adrian was standing at the end of the hallway in the other direction, Toby and Ib on either of his sides. Cassia was too glad to see him.

"Adrian, get on the purple tile!" Cassia yelled. "Tell Ib and Toby to do the same thing with the dark blue and dark red tiles! QUICK!"

He flowed her directions, and they gained their own paths jutting from their tiles. They followed them to the end as Cassia barked directions given by the painting. They were almost halfway there when the momma doll reached out for Holly and she shrieked.

Cassia pulled her out of the way as the giant claw came down. Garry recomposed himself and managed to dive out of the way. Unfortunately, it was onto a chunk of uncovered tiles, and the sickening sound of metal on metal came from above him, louder than before. He rolled away before five blades fell down, almost dismembering him. Cassia let out the breath she was holding, and steered holy away from the momma doll, which was recoiling because one of the blades had skimmed her arm. Black stuffing poured out like blood, but she didn't care. All she cared about was them.

"Garry! Keep moving!" Cassia said, and he was able to get out of the way just as another few blades rushed down to meet him. They came down with such force that they cracked the tiles underneath them. "Keep her distracted! I'll get the others over here!"

As he dodged the momma doll, blades were coming down in his wake. Some hit her, some didn't, but when they did, the cuts were worse and worse. But the creature had amazing drive, and wouldn't stop pursuing Garry. She wanted him above all else.

"Adrian! Move forward one!" Cassia's yells increased in urgency. "Ib, you too! Toby, left!"

They followed this pattern, and kept following her instructions as fast as they could until soon they were on the platform that Cassia and Holly were on. Holly clung to Toby like a lifeline. Garry continued to dive out of the momma doll's way, managing to avoid being cut by the blades. Suddenly, just as the momma doll's claw was inches from his face, he propelled himself backwards, and a blade came down, right on top of the momma doll's head. With the sound of a thousand blankets ripping, the blade tore through her cranium, and soon, she lay there still, a lifeless mass of blue cloth, black stuffing, and red eyes.

The whole room began to shake, like an earthquake had just begun. Tiles that hadn't been cracked by the momma doll's massive claws or the blades that came from the hatches in the ceiling spontaneously destroyed themselves, spewing rock and dust whenever they broke. The tiles on the ceiling did the same, raining debris from the ceiling.

"Duck!" Toby yelled, and they only had time to duck their heads and crouch to the ground before every single tile in the entire room imploded.

It was like being pelted by hail and being in a sandstorm at the same time. It was a storm of rocks, dust, and painted tile. Cassia hunched over Holly, who was whimpering underneath of her. The shaking reached a climax, and everyone braced themselves for something worse.

It never came. The shaking ceased and the dust settled, and Cassia opened her eyes.

The room was a rocky, rubble-ridden mess. Every single tile was cracked, every surface destroyed. Cassia stood up slowly, rocks rolling off her. Holly coughed the dust out of her lungs and Adrian shook the tile fragments out of his hair. Toby took his glasses off his face, which were more cracked them they were before, and rubbed them on his shirt. Cassia turned around to say something, but before she could Adrian wrapped his arms around her. She was shocked for a moment, but she hugged him back after a few second. She was thankful he was there, and his warmth was comforting. _He came into the gallery just to find me, _she remembered._ Why? _As she pulled away, Garry strode over to them, his hands in his pockets and his head down. Ib ran over to him and hugged him, silent tears streaking the dust on her face.

"It's okay," Garry managed a smile.

"Look, Cassia," Holly pointed to the far wall. "The painting. It's still intact."

Holly was right. It was covered in dust, but still intact. No rips; nothing. Cassia stepped off the platform, and nothing stopped her from walking over to the painting. Before she could reach it, though, the air shimmered in front of her. A form appeared, of a familiar little girl.

"Belle?" Holly said.

"We don't have much time!" Belle said, her expression very upset. "We have to go. NOW."

"What's wrong?" Cassia said, and was answered by a loud bang behind the door farthest from them. It sounded like it was coming from the previous hallway. Belle turned around and put her hand on the painting. It glowed briefly with her icy blue aura and it slid aside.

"Climb inside. Quickly," Belle led the way. Cassia climbed in, helping Holly up behind her. The others were close behind them as they went down the hallway. It was pitch black inside, but Belle's pendant glowed on Cassia's neck and illuminated the hallway.

"What's going on, Belle?" Cassia asked.

"She's ready," Belle said.

"Mary?"

"Yes," Belle nodded. "She has everything she needs."

"To… posses Holly?" she said quietly.

"Yes, she has everything she needs," Belle said. "Which is why we need to get you away."

They ran around a corner and down another hallway. As they went down the hall, Cassia could see the wallpaper start to fade. It began to peel and there were large, black scorch marks scarring the walls and floors. They passed a chandelier that was broken and half hanging on the ceiling, glass littering the floor. They stepped around it and moved on.

"Why does it look like this," Cassia said.

"I –" Belle looked confused. "I don't know. This shouldn't be here. I've never seen an area of my father's gallery like this before. Mary must have changed it. I didn't think it was possible, but it's the only explanation."

"So… you don't know where we're going?"

"Anywhere but there," Belle shook her head.

They came to the end of the hall. The door in front of them was scorched, as if by fire, and it was splintered, like someone had taken an axe to it. Belle froze, not getting within four feet of it, as if it's very presence weakened her spirit.

"This isn't right. This is very wrong," Belle was trembling. Cassia would hug her if she could.

There was a loud bang at the end of the hallway, followed by incessant giggling. Holly squeezed Toby's hand and said, "I remember that voice."

Cassia had no choice. She opened the door and they all spilled inside.

She shut it behind them and the room was pitch black. Belle's pendant didn't glow. It was eerily silent, and suddenly, the giggles broke out again. But they weren't outside the door. The candles on the walls flickered to life, and standing in the middle of the room was a girl, about ten years old or so. She had big blue eyes and daffodil-yellow hair. Her dress was green, but it was ripped in several places and burnt. She had long, grotesque burns up her arms and legs, and one long burn down her face. Her grin was maniacal, and Belle stepped forward, trying to compose herself as best she could.

"Hello, Mary," Belle said.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Hello, sister dear," Mary replied. She looked straight at Holly and said, "You have something I need, Belle. I'd like to have it back."

Holly recoiled, her face stricken with terror. It took all of Ib's courage, but she finally managed to say, "You can't have Holly, Mary."

Mary's head snapped towards the sound of Ib's voice and she smiled again. Ib's heart rate quickened, but she stood strong. _She can't hurt me. She can't hurt me. She can't hurt me._

"Oh hello, Ib," she said. "It's lovely to see you again. Why did you leave me? We could have been great friends. Like… sisters, even."

"We were never your friends, Mary," Garry pushed Ib behind him protectively, but she moved next to him again. _I can face this, Garry._

"Garry! You're here too?" Marry looked delighted. "I was sure you had died before! Ah well, soon you'll be here with me, like everyone else who comes here."

"We escaped once, we'll do it again!" Ib cried.

"Your friends here won't though," Mary said. "Not all of them, at least."

"We're smarter then you, Mary," Cassia growled. "We're making it out."

Mary replied with another grin and reached her hands into the pockets of her dress. When she pulled, them out, she had two objects, one in each palm. One hand held a little vial filled with a red substance. Ib realized with a jolt that it was blood. In the other hand was a three inch long lock of blonde hair that looked just like Holly's.

"Remember when I saved you from that horrible statue, Holly?" Mary's face was full of pity. "I thought to myself, 'Well, I've saved her life. Now she should give me something as thanks!'"

Holly reached towards the underside of the back of her hair and gasped as her fingers came up short of three inches of hair. _That must be her blood, too. _Ib thought, and had to actually slow her own breathing so she wouldn't pass out. She put the hair and the blood in the same hand and fished something else out of her pocket. Ib almost did pass out when she saw what it was. It was a palate knife. The same knife Mary had nearly killed her with so many months ago. The symbol of her madness. Of her mental descent.

Mary saw her expression and said, "You remember, don't you Ib? We had so much fun together!"

She took the palate knife and ran it across her palm. A liquid poured out, but it wasn't blood. It was yellow paint, but it wasn't thick like acrylic or oil paint. It was thin like watercolor. _She has no blood, because she isn't real. _They ran for the door, but as Adrian tugged at it, he found it was locked. Before their eyes, the door sank into the wall, and the wall rippled, like it was water and the door was just a heavy object that wasn't buoyant enough to stay afloat.

"M-m-m," Mary said, uncorking the vial. Suddenly, the wall burst into flames. Ib jumped back and knocked into Garry, and Cassia fell over. Ib was no longer in control of her body. She was forced to her knees, her hands on the floor in front of her. She looked over with effort and saw that Belle was now pinned to the wall. She was trying to disappear, but she couldn't.

"This… is… impossible…" Belle strained to breathe. "You're… not supposed to be able to… manipulate… the gallery like this…"

"Oh right, Belle. It's only supposed to be you," Mary grimaced. "Because daddy loves you best. Well, daddy isn't the strong one now. I am."

Suddenly, the pendant levitated off Cassia's neck. It floated slowly towards Mary, glowing as it went forward. Cassia muttered, "No."

"Wait!" Ib yelled. The pendant dropped to the floor with a _clink_, the chain swirling around it.

Mary looked over and said, "What?"

"Do you want to play a game?"

"A game?" Mary's face flashed with brief curiosity. "What kind of game?"

"Loves me, loves me not," Ib said.


	20. Chapter 20

**So, I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for my birthday. I'd like to think it was in the name of research, but the truth is I'm just obsessed with Greco-Roman art. If you were at the PMOA on Sunday the 7****th**** and saw a small Italian teenager pointing up at a big sculpture exclaiming "I KNEW IT! THAT **_**WAS **_**CERES!" then you should have gone over to say hi. I'm awesome. And yes, I'm officially fifteen now, and I'm so stoked!**

**Twenty chapters… wow :D There are no words to describe how great I feel right now. I'd like to thank the academy, my colleagues at Hogwarts, and The Association for Malicious Chocolate Bars. MTFBWYA. This chapter is going to be hard to write, so I apologize if it sucks. **

**Confession #6: The best geek-out movie of all time (I think) is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" "Depends, is it African or European?"**

**Anyways, thank you all for helping me make it this far. I would have quit this idea long ago if I didn't know that people liked it so much. So here I am. And there you are, wherever you might be, waiting for me to stop talking and get on with it already. I'm sorry if this chapter is a bit confusing. All will fall into place soon, if you read between the lines. Review please!**

Mary's face lit up. "Really? I LOVE that game! You know me so well, Ib!"

Ib tried to keep from grimacing, and managed to say with a straight face, "But we're doing it a little differently."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. If you want to play, you have to follow the rules."

Mary cocked her head to one side, which would have been cute if not for the dismembering burns crisscrossing her creamy complexion. "What kind of rules are you thinking of?"

"Ib –" Garry started warningly, but she held up a hand to silence him, and he did.

"Firstly, you have to hand over Holly's blood and hair,"

"Why?" she whined.

Ib smiled, knowing that her plan was working. That was something else she developed in the year she'd been outside the gallery: excellent planning skills. "Because it's a rule, silly. Do you want to play or not?"

Mary looked down at the vials and lock of hair in her left hand, then at the gash on her right palm, and reluctantly stepped forward, holding these items out to Ib. She twitched a few times, like she was fighting with herself inside her own head. _She's mentally unstable, _thought Ib. _If this works out right…_

"I can't take them if I'm trapped in this position," Ib used her chin to gesture to her own form, still kneeling with her palms glued to the floor by an invisible force.

Mary pursed her lips, then snapped her fingers and suddenly Ib and the others were mobile again.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cassia wanted to fly at Mary and take her down, but she knew she couldn't. Ib looked determined, and Cassia knew that look anywhere: she had a plan. And she knew that when someone had a plan, everyone was a pawn, and if that pawn moved in the wrong direction, it could jeopardize the entire game. She saw that the others realized this too, because none of them made a move to attack Mary. _Plus, she could always trap us again before we could get to her, _she added to herself. Ib put the vials and Holly's hair in her skirt pocket and took a step towards Mary.

"If I win, then I get to keep these and you won't bother us until we get out of here or otherwise," she held up the vials and the hair. "If you win, you can have these, you can posses Holly, and you can kill us. You can't attack my friends, and my friends can't attack you. It's just you and me."

She thought for a moment, then nodded. "That seems fair."

"You swear to play by the rules?"

"Yes."

"Cross your heart and hope to die?"

"Only if you do too."

Ib made a crossing motion over her heart, and so did Mary. _What is she trying to do? _Cassia thought as she tried to figure out Ib's plan. "There. Before we play, though, I'd like to speak with my friends in private, please."

Mary pouted, but disappeared in a swath of yellow mist, taking all exits from the room with her.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_There's a Carton for every story, Adrian._

Adrian didn't know why he remembered his mother's words in that moment, but he couldn't help it. His mom was a big literary freak and always gave him snippets of knowledge like that. As Ib walked over to them, trying to regulate her own breathing, the only thing he could think of was: _She could die. _Garry pulled her into his arms as she held back her tears, and a pang went through Adrian's chest. _She's too young to die. _

"What are you planning to do?" Garry said.

"I'm going to try to take down Mary, but not at the expense of all your lives," she said. "I want to give you all a fighting chance."

"You are very brave, Ib," Adrian had almost forgotten Belle was there, no longer pinend to the wall by the force of Mary's magic. Belle reached down and picked up her pendant, putting it around her neck once again. It glowed, like it was a puzzle piece that had found its match. "Not many people can make a choice like that for others. I wish you the best of luck against my sister."

"Thank you, Belle," Ib said.

"Are you sure you thought this through enough, Ib?" Toby was concerned too. "Are you sure you can win?"

"No, but it's my only option," she shook her head. "My cards are on the table. So… if I lose…"

"We should take some time to say goodbye," Garry finished, and Ib gave a feeble nod in agreement.

Goodbyes are the worst. They had all grown so close after all this, and to know that it all may end in the next few minutes was terrifying. Adrian watched as Holly and Toby held each other tightly, tears streaming down Holly's face as he spoke some soothing words to her. Ib went around to everyone, giving them goodbyes and saying how much she respected them. When she got around to Adrian, she leaned over and gave him a hug. He was stiff for a moment, then hugged her back.

_This can't end like this, _he thought.

_There's a Carton for every story._

Adrian took something out of Ib's pocket, and put something else in before she could notice. She pulled away, gave him a small smile, then moved away from him, not even suspecting what he'd just done. He felt the gravity of his actions fall on him like a rock, knowing very well what the end result would be. _There's a Carton for every story, Adrian. Someone who sacrifices for the betterment of others, and even for the betterment of someone they love dearly. You'll understand one day._

He had a feeling that day had come.

In his mind, his plan was set in motion.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Holly didn't know what to think about all of this. _I should just give myself over to Mary and save the others this misery. We could all die, or we could all escape. The odds are not in our favor. _All her teachers and everyone she had ever met had told her she was exceptional. That she was the brightest and smartest kid they had ever seen and always knew the answer to any problem thrown at her. But here she was, in a haunted, surreal gallery, with her brother and all her friends about to put their lives on the line to save hers.

She was terrified. She wanted her mother so badly it hurt. As Toby hugged her close and whispered encouraging, uplifting things into her halo of bright blonde hair, she knew he wanted her too. But they both knew that it was likely that they would never see her again. This made Holly want to cry harder, but the gallery had stolen her tears.

She had been tortured, taken, attacked, scarred, and nearly lost her mind around every corner. She'd almost drowned in paint, was chased away from her dying brother by a hoard of statues and paintings roaring with bloodlust, and if it weren't for Cassia, Ib, and the hope that her brother had somehow survived, she would have perished at the hands of one of the monsters in the shadows. The pain she had endured traversing this gallery wasn't something she would ask on her worst enemy. It's nothing a child should have experienced. She was shocked when she learned that Ib had somehow survived it, nearly on her own for most of the time. Garry had nearly died on several occurrences, and he was a few years shy of an adult. She admired Ib's courage, but looking at her now she looked broken and defeated as she said her goodbyes and awaited her final showdown with Mary, if you could even call it that. As she managed to detach from Toby and wandered over to Cassia, watching from below her stoic expression that was leaking hurt.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cassia hugged Holly's small form close and stroked her hair. "It'll be okay, Holly." All Holly could do in reply was nod into her red shirt. Holly was the closest thing Cassia had to a sister and she felt so responsible for her, so indebted to her for helping her along. She felt helpless to save her. _I feel helpless to save anyone._

Holly pulled away and nodded next to her. Cassia turned around and standing next to her was Adrian, his face ashen and his expression bleak. Holly went away courteously as Cassia turned to face him. _What do I say? _She thought, her ruby red eyes meeting his violet ones.

"Adrian, I –"

Before she could even finish her sentence, he grabbed the back of her neck, pulled her up to eye level with him, and kissed her. Cassia's mind shorted out and she couldn't even register what was happening, so she just closed her eyes and enjoyed the brief feeling of slightly melancholy bliss. This boy – this infuriating, sadistic, loyal, broken boy – had officially stolen Cassia's heart, and she had no idea how to feel about it. He pulled away after a few moments, leaving her mind whirling, and Cassia didn't care if the others were looking at them or not.

He pressed his forehead to hers and there was a sad silence between them before he said, "I had to do that."

"It's okay," Cassia's voice came out about an octave higher than usual.

Soon, there was a rush of air in the room. In a swath of yellow smoke, Mary formed again in the center of the floor, looking towards Ib expectantly. The cut on her hand re-healed and she looked very impatient. "I've given you enough time. Let's begin."

She flicked her hands and suddenly Cassia felt like she wasn't in control of her own body. She flew backwards, her feet dragging along the floor limply and hit the wall with a thud, her limbs splaying out and stiffening like she was being restrained. She looked to her left and right frantically and saw that the others were struggling with the same issues; even Belle, who still looked astonished that Mary was even able to do that to her.

"I told you not to hurt my friends!" Ib cried.

"What? I'm just making sure they don't retaliate," Mary smiled innocently, her big blue eyes beaming.

Ib's fists clenched at her sides, but her expression never steamed. She simply said, "Okay Mary. We'll do this your way."

She reached into her pocket with trembling hands and pulled out a rose. The rose shimmered and appeared in Mary's hand, gleaming and dusted with sparkles, obscuring its petal color with the sunny yellow color of her magic. When the light died down and she shook the dust from the rose, you could practically see the astonishment on Ib's face. Mary's hands shook and her cheeks flamed red. Smoke curled off her fingertips and her scars contorted in her anger. When Cassia saw the rose, she forgot how to breathe. She hooked at Adrian to her right, but his eyes were closed and he seemed disconnected from the world. She was confused. What had just happened? Her heart contracted in her chest as she looked back to Mary and Ib just to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her.

The rose in Mary's hand wasn't maroon red, like Ib's. It was violet.

"You cheated," Mary 's fist closed over the flower, and the entire room burst into flames.


	21. Chapter 21

**Helloooo everyone! It's me again! I know I haven't updated I a while, but that's because my play practices have been very time consuming and I haven't had much free time. But there's no school today because of our good friend Sandy, so I'll have a lot of time to myself to write. Though I might not have Wi-Fi for long…**

**Confession #7: I am fully and completely addicted to tumblr. My tumblr is my baby.**

**This chapter has been the best so far, I think. I was so excited to write it, but I wanted to do it right, so I took a couple days to do it. I hope you all like it. We're so, so close to the end that I can practically taste it. Give me feedback once you read it. I'd be much obliged! Thanks!**

Chaos ensued as soon as Mary started the fire. Cassia fell off the wall and landed in a heap on the floor, coughing as she cleared the smoke from her lungs. Adrian was next to her, holding his side like someone had just stabbed him or he'd just had a bout of appendicitis. Cassia's head snapped back to Mary, who was holding the purple rose in her hand with a raging look on her face. Smoke curled off the ends of her dress as she began to advance towards them.

Cassia grabbed Adrian's arm and tugged him up, slinging his arm over her shoulders as she looked around for the others. Holly, Ib, and Toby were racing towards a door that was being held open by Garry. Garry looked back to her and yelled, "Come on!"

The two of them stumbled towards the door and through the frame as Garry slammed it shut behind them, using the key to lock it. They all backed up from the door as smoke wafted from underneath it. The wood paneling of it began to char and little holes began to dapple the surface. Giggling came from inside as the six kids stumbled backwards and raced down the hall. Fire began to creep down the walls behind them in hot pursuit of their next victims. Belle flickered and formed, running next to Holly and Toby. She seemed to become more solid as she ran, but as soon as she neared the fiery parts of the wall, she dissipated again. Mary's essence was making her weak and unable to form. Adrian was wincing as they raced away, the giggles growing closer and closer with every step. Adrian was growing weaker, and soon, Cassia knew why. A voice echoed down the hall, but this time it was in front of them and not behind.

"Loves me, loves me not. Loves me, loves me not…."

As they skidded to a halt, Cassia saw with horror that on the floor leading down the hall were purple petals arranged in a line leading down to the end. Adrian grew heavier on her side and she could see blood dripping out between his fingers.

"How did she get up there?" Ib asked rhetorically.

"She rules this place," Belle said shakily. She turned and fled in the direction they came from and said, "Maybe I can make a door a ways down. Come on! We have no time to waste!"

_Please, Adrian, please hold on, _Cassia thought as she supported him more. They all ran towards the middle, but found only a charred mess of rafters and paneling. Pictures on the walls had fallen and cracked in their frames, melting paint oozing out the side. They turned around again, but blocking their way were blue dolls with beady eyes, hanging by their necks on nooses dangling from the ceiling. Hundreds of their blank stares closed off their last exit. Belle put her hand against the wall and slowly a door began to appear. _It's not forming fast enough, _Cassia thought as the giggles grew louder.

"Loves me, loves me not…"

"Get in everyone!" Belle threw the door open and they raced inside. The hallway before them was long, but there was no fire, so it was their best bet. They ran again, but as Mary's voice echoed down the hall while playing her little game, Adrian slipped to the floor beside her.

She fell to her knees beside him, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. Blood was definitely dripping from his side now, and gashes had opened on his face and arms. His face was pale – paler then usual – and it wasn't looking good. He looked up at her, his violet eyes meeting hers, as the others stopped.

"Cassia! We have to go!" Ib yelled.

"Adrian is hurt!" she called back. She turned back to them and barked, "All of you! Go! We'll catch up!"

"You're crazy! We're not going to leave you!" Garry said.

"I promise! Go!"

The others hesitated, but Garry and Ib ushered them down the hall. Cassia turned back to Adrian and held his face in her hands, the pads of her fingers staining with blood. He looked scared; more scared then he ever did in this place. He looked younger, and his expression said, _What did I do to deserve this? What? _There was only one question Cassia could think to ask this dying boy.

"Why did you switch the roses?" her voice cracked.

"Ib… she couldn't win…" he managed. "I couldn't let her die… for us..."

"Why did it have to be you?" she covered her mouth with one hand.

Even in a moment like that, he managed a crooked smirk. "There's a Carton for… every story…"

_What does that even mean? _Cassia thought as the giggles grew louder down the hall.

"You have to go," he said. He must have seen her expression because he took her hand in his and said, "Cassia, please. There's no other way."

"There has to be!" she cried.

Soon, flames began to creep across the walls and all Cassia could hear was, "Loves me, loves me not…." She looked around, but saw no one. Adrian took her hand in his and she felt something small and delicate against the palm of her hand. He moved her hand to her pocket and forced her to put it in it. She was determined not to cry. He looked her in the eyes and whispered, "Remember me."

There was a huge crash as the rafters fell behind them in a charred mess of flames and embers. The door began to crack and the temperature shot up. The giggles tuned into shrill, evil laughter and seemed to reverberate through the halls for an eternity. Adrian pulled Cassia into a brief, electrifying kiss, then pushed her away and yelled, "GO! Run!"

Cassia ran as fast as she could and didn't look back. The others were far ahead but she could hear their footsteps as the fire rained down behind her. She felt like she was running for hours before she crashed into someone. She stumbled backwards and saw that it was Garry. So relieved to see a familiar face, she finally broke down in tears.

"Cassia?" his look was puzzled as he grabbed her shoulders. "What happened? Where's Adrian?"

"No time," she sobbed, tugging his coat sleeve as she quickly passed. "We have to go. _Now._ Where are the others?"

"Farther ahead. I told them to go so I could make sure you got back safely. What happened?" he looked genuinely worried.

"Adrian is dead," she choked, biting her knuckles as they ran from the flames and the giggles. "He's dead, Garry. He died so Ib could live and we would have a better chance of escaping."

"Cassia, I –"

"Let's just get out of here, okay?" she snapped, and they were both silent until they saw the others, who were surrounded around the end of the hallway. Belle was concentrating hard, but couldn't manage to make a doorway appear.

"It's the end of the line," Toby said, pounding his fist against the solid wall.

"It can't end here!" Holly cried.

"I can't make a door appear," Belle said. "There must be something on the other side of this wall that Mary doesn't want us to get to. There's only one thing that is that important to her."

They all knew what it was without her even saying it. Cassia opened her bag and pulled out a paintbrush and a tube of blue paint. "I might be able to get us through here, but I'll need some time."

There was a bug crash and they could see the fire glow at the end of the hall. "Time is something we need to use sparingly," Ib said.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ib's first plan didn't work out too well, but this one would. She was sure of it.

Even if it wasn't the most intricate plan in the world, Ib knew it was the best: distraction. All of them would have to keep Mary from obliterating them in a fiery raging storm until Cassia finished the door. Cassia went to work while the others surrounded her, making sure nothing got to her. She worked as fast as she could, but not fast enough. Mary appeared and threw a ball of fire straight at Ib's face. She leaped to the left and it hurtled in another direction. The ends of her hair singed but nothing came off. She landed on her butt and her tailbone ached, but she had to keep moving or she'd be crisped.

"Garry! Get down!" she yelled as another wall of fire approached Garry. He ran out of the way and the wall took out a section of paneling, revealing swirling blackness underneath, like the gallery was situated inside a black hole. She saw a spark here and a spark there, but the matter just swirled like a never ending abyss of smoke. Ib had never thought about where the gallery actually was. The answer? _It was nowhere._

Toby grabbed Holly by the collar and pulled her into his arms, running in another direction as Mary pointed to the spot where they were and it burst into flames. Toby called back, "Almost done there Cassia?"

"Almost!" Cassia put the last touched on the knob, making it as accurate as possible.

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" Mary shrieked, and a fireball flew at the back of Cassia's head.

In a flash of blue light, the fireball dissipated into smoke, leaving a wincing Cassia in its place. She opened one eyes, realizing she was alive, and scrambled for her dropped paintbrush. Belle was standing in front of her, holding her hands out in front of her. She looked do solid she could have been mistaken for human. She glowed blue and the air grew chillier, like a cold front was moving in. This made Mary's brightness fade a bit. Mary looked astonished, but still lusting for blood.

"You've gone far enough sister!" Belle's voice echoed through the wrecked hall. Cassia gave the signal that the door was finished, and opened it up to reveal another room inside. She went in, followed by Toby and Holly. Garry and Ib were left in the hall with Belle, and she turned around and said, "Go! I'll keep her here! I have unfinished business to attend to."

Ib and Garry exchanged a glance, and Garry nodded solemnly. She turned and bolted for the door.

. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cassia wanted to run right back out the door when she saw what was inside the room.

Mounds and mounds of the blue dolls lay leaped upon one another, staring their grotesquely blank stares to the floors, walls, and ceiling, which were all covered in painted words in Mary's hand. "DADDY LIVES" and "LOVES ME LOVES ME NOT" appeared more than once. The pyramids of dolls all stood around a figure in the center. Floating by itself in a shower of light sparkles was Weiss' _Charmaria. _Mary's painting. It was burned severely at the edges, and the only image that was salvaged was hers in the center. There were burn spots on the exact places where Mary's burns were on her body. The yellow roses were rendered shapeless and the beautiful ornate frame was charred and smoked.

"We can't burn it," Holly said. "We have to make sure she's dead this time."

"We could slice it," Cassia said. "I think that my sculpting knife is still sharp enough to do some damage. To canvas, at least."

"Let me see it," Garry said. Cassia fished around in her bag and brought out a dulling carving knife. It didn't carve very weel anymore, but it could still slice if you pushed hard enough. He shook his head and said, "No. It has to change the painting itself, and not just the canvas."

Cassia brought out a little bit of red paint left in the tube of acrylic and took the knife from Garry. She spread it along the sharp edge of the knife and turned to the _Charmaria. _She took a deep breath, put the knife up to the canvas, and made the first slice, the paint staining the edges on the inside like real gashes. The painting's glow began to flicker and Cassia felt power – or magic, perhaps – coursing through her veins as she willed everything she had into each cut. All the pain Mary caused, all the paint the gallery caused, went into it. Adrian's death went into it. Her sorrow, her stress, her guilt, everything went into it.

_Die, Mary. _A single tear roled down her cheek as she squeezed her eyes shut. _Die, die, die, die…_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Belle watched the first gash open up in her sister as she pressed herself against a shield of blue magic, preventing the fire from spreading to the door. Mary looked shocked and her fires began to extinguish. Belle's shield came down and she let the glow die, knowing very well that her friends inside were succeeding.

"What… what is this…?" Mary cried out in pain as the gashed oozed red paint, and her yellow blood mixed with it as it dripped down. One opened across her face, disfiguring her mouth. Another over her eye, and she began to sob in pain as she held her face. Gash after gash; fingers fell off, hair fell out, yellow and red spilled across her green dress and matted into what was left of her hair. Her cried of pain made Belle's heart ache for her sister, but then she reminded herself: _This is no longer Mary. My sister died almost 100 years ago…_

"You can't win this time, Mary Weiss," Belle said softly as she drifted to the ground. She walked over to the bleeding, dismembered form of her sister, twitching and convulsing as the last of her soul dripped out of her in a stream of paint. She looked broken not only physically, but mentally.

Mary's last words were:

"I love you, Belle," she whispered, and her form glowed. In a shower of golden sparkles, the last of Mary turned to charred dust.

_Ashes to ashes…_

"May God be merciful to you, dear sister. May your soul rest at last," Belle was not human just yet, so she could not cry. She could not weep for her sister.

She turned around and willed the door to open. It swung around in its doorframe and she walked in. She could slowly begin to feel the ground underneath her bare feet. Slowly she was growing more and more human; something she hadn't felt in so, so long. The others were gathered around Cassia inside, who was kneeling next to a fallen picture in a cracked frame. Yellow light was fading out around them and the painting was cut up and stained red beyond recognition. Cassia was sobbing, holding a red-stained knife, and Garry had his arm around her. Ib had her hand on his shoulder, looking around at them all sadly but strongly. Holly turned back to belle as Toby let go of her hand.

"Is it over?" her voice quivered with the finality of the question.

"Yes, Holly," Belle gave a sigh and a small smile towards the group. "Mary is finally dead."


	22. Chapter 22

**Well everyone, we've reached the end of the line. It's been so fun and you guys have been amazing fans! I hope you liked the story as much as I did! I can't believe this started while I was watching Pewdiepie play Ib in the middle of August with nothing to do and some free space on my flash drive. It's really amazing and I'm so proud of myself. Okay, that sounds selfish. I love you all too! So, so much! Kisses!**

**Final confession: My motto and everyone's mottos should be "There must be more than this provincial life." It's from Beauty and the Beast because I'm sappy like that. I always live my life thinking that no matter how bad things get, there has to be something better waiting for you on the other side.**

**And with that, I will commence the beginning of the end. All will make itself clear. It's been great guys! Thank you so much!**

The room began to shake. Cassia stumbled a bit but was able to keep her footing. Ib clung to Garry and Toby took hold of Holly, pulling her close. It seemed like everyone had someone to hold onto but Cassia, which sadly made Cassia feel more alone than ever. The dolls one by one exploded into poufs of dust and some even splattered paint. The floor began to fall into the abyss that was apparently underneath them. Fissures opened around them in a circle and as she looked in astonishment at the floor that was cracking at her feet, she felt a hand grip her arm and yank her back just as the floor fell around her.

"Watch it," Garry said, and she didn't dare let go of his arm.

"The whole room is falling apart!" Ib cried as she stepped away from the crumbling circle.

The circle was closing in on them and as they grew closer to together cassia feared they would be consumed by the swirling black abyss around them. The walls fell away and they were soon surrounded by the black mass. It seemed like they were floating in a clear sphere that the typhoon kept its distance from. The shaking stopped suddenly and the floor ceased falling away. Cassia expected to hear the roaring of a black storm around her, but it was completely silent; not a rush of wind to break the thick air.

Suddenly, two forms flickered to life, standing before them in a shower of shining light. One was Belle, bathed in blue light, looking more alive and free then she ever had. Holding her hand was a man with blonde hair, a slight beard, wearing a paint-stained green shirt with the sleeves rolled up as if he'd just finished a painting. He was cloaked in a pure white light that looked even more luminous against the dark background.

"Guertena Weiss," Ib breathed as gaped in awe at the man.

"Yes, Ib," the man spoke with a comforting tone that made Cassia feel warm and safe. "My spirit has been here all along. I am the gallery itself."

"How could you have created something so horrible and cruel?" Holly demanded.

"It wasn't him," Belle said, looking up at her father for encouragement. He gave a subtle nod and she turned back to the others. "Mary's energy fed off his energy in the gallery. I did too, but I knew that we had to share it for it to stay balanced. Mary became greedy and power hungry, and somehow found a way to sap my father's energy away and take over the gallery, strewing his spirit too thin to regain it."

"Why did you make the gallery in the first place, Mr. Weiss?"

"I didn't intentionally," Guertena explained. "I hadn't realized that in catching the likeness of my wife and children, I had trapped their very souls inside the paintings. After I died, I found myself in a sort of… purgatory. My wife and children were there as well, trapped with my soul in an exact replica of my gallery in the real world. I spent almost twenty years looking for an exit, and when I did, I found that I really didn't _want _to leave. In making that decision, I had vowed to keep the spirit gallery intact so other artists and geniuses may come to see it when they die or otherwise. For a while, I had many visitors – deceased local artists like Ramner and Cosici whom you probably don't know of and some well known ones like van Gough. This was their final resting place, inside my gallery. It was an honor and a privilege. Soon, though, Mary took over, and for a long time the gallery became so twisted that I had to block off all exits to the real world. Not all of them were completely sealed, though, and Mary found a way to open one of them to my gallery in the real world. She loves playing games; always had. That's why Ib and Garry were the first in years to gain access to the spirit gallery, though I apologize because it Is not what it used to be. The monsters you encountered were the spirits of the artists that were here with me before. Mary changed them into her playthings."

"If Ib and I were let in by Mary," Garry's look was a puzzled one, "then why could we get in a second time?"

"I let you in," Guertena said simply. "I needed to; the warped gallery was growing stronger and soon Mary would have gained access to more and more portals, blurring the line between the spirit gallery and the real one. She would have wreaked havoc on the mortal world, and by then I would be dead, belle would have perished, and no one could stop here. I had to make a choice: what was left of my daughter or the wellbeing of the world."

"He had actually only intended for four of you to enter to assist him," Belle elaborated. "Cassia, Adrian, Holly, and Toby. You were the four that would help save the gallery. Ib and Garry used their own methods to get in and assist you, but it was you four who were the real contenders."

"Why us?" Cassia bucked up and asked the question on all their minds.

"Being a spirit, we have the ability to glimpse into the future slightly, and I foresaw what each of you would have to do to save us all," Belle said. "It was preordained. Destiny. Whatever you wish to call it."

"Yes," Guertena said. "Holly has ingenuity beyond her years and wisdom grown adults could only dream of achieving, all while still having the imagination of a child. Toby's impeccable problem solving skills would help you get out of tough fixes, which proved handy for you, did it not?"

"What about Adrian?" Cassia squeaked. "He's dead, and for what?"

"Adrian's sacrifice was not in vain," Belle said. "Because Mary had attached so strongly to Ib, her death would make Mary all the more strong. In fact, she would have grown so strong from the sacrifice of the girl who cheated death once before that she could have killed you all on the spot if Ib lost, rules or no rules. Adrian made sure that didn't happen."

"He couldn't have known, that though."

"He didn't, but he sacrificed himself to save Ib. To save the life of an innocent child. That was enough for him to make his decision."

"And… me?" Cassia asked.

"Cassia, you were the most important person of all," Guertena smiled proudly. "You were blessed with a gift; the ability to make your paintings come to life. It was dormant in the real world but became unlocked when you entered the spirit gallery. You were the only one who could possibly kill Mary, obliterating her soul for good. She can't re-form strewn that thin. For that, we are all indebted to you. Thank you, Cassia Kensington."

"What about our mom?" Toby asked, holding Holly close. "Will she remember us? Will _any _of our loved ones remember us?"

Guertena's face darkened. "I'm sorry to say, no. This gallery was made for the dead, not the living, and in entering it your identity died with you, I'm afraid."

There was a brief silence as Holly whimpered into Toby's side. "We'll have nowhere to go," she whispered.

"On the contrary," Guertena said, opening his palm up facing what would have been the ceiling but is now a swirling mass of clouds. Something glowed in his hand briefly and in it formed a piece of folded up paper. He walked over – or glided, rather – and placed it in Garry's hand. "I had two houses before I died; one in the country, where I lived with my family, and a large apartment near enough to the city so I could go for business or art shows. My home in the country has long since dilapidated, but I'd like to give you the apartment in the city."

"But… I'm only seventeen," Garry shook his head. "I can't own this."

"As far as society knows, you're eighteen," Guertena gave him a wink. Garry smiled and folded the papers into his coat pocket. "Also, I'd like you o know that my daughter will be joining you in the mortal world."

"What?" Holly was astonished. She gaped at belle and said, "How?"

"Remember I told you that my spirit could become mortal at any time? That I had not yet been given my second chance at life?" Belle smiled. "Mary is gone, now, so I have nothing to fear. I wish to live again."

"Won't you want to be with your father?" Ib asked, turning to Guertena. "Where will you go?"

"I will stay in the gallery. I will reconstruct it from the ground up, wiping every detail Mary smudged onto my palate clean and start anew," Guertena said. "Belle will still have her magic abilities in the real world, though somewhat diluted by reality, so she will be able to transport back to the gallery whenever she likes. She will aid me in rebuilding my dreams, but you all will never be bothered by it again."

"One last question," Toby said. "How do we get home?"

"The gallery may be gone, but my magic and power over it still remains," Guertena thrust his hand out in front of him, and a swirling white portal appeared, casting light upon them all. "This is your exit. I hope that you use your second chances at life wisely. Good luck Toby, Holly, Garry, Ib, and Cassia. Godspeed."

Holly and Toby were the first to step towards the portal. Holly turned around and pulled Cassia tightly into a hug. "Thank you for everything, Cassia. I'm looking forward to living with you. We'll be like sisters!"

"Go on," Cassia nudged her forward, and with her hand in her brother's they crossed over to the other side.

Ib tugged on Garry's jacket and said, "Come on. I've had enough excitement here to last a lifetime."

Garry turned back to Cassia and gave her a smile. "It's been… interesting. Let's see what we make of the real world now."

"I'm sure we'll never look at it the same way again," Cassia said as they both passed through the portal.

Soon, it was only Guertena, Belle, and Cassia left. Cassia turned back to Belle and held out her hand. Belle looked to her father with nothing but love in her eyes, and Guertena nodded forward, as if to say, _Seize the opportunity, Belle. _She stepped away from her father, her glow diminishing, and took Cassia's hand. Belle became completely solid in that moment, her light blonde hair billowing in the silent wind. Her hand was cold in Cassia's, but something told her that Belle would warm up soon. Belle looked up at Cassia and tugged her towards the portal.

As she stepped in, Cassia looked back for one last time and saw that Guertena was not alone. He was now standing next to a woman with long hair and warm brown eyes clothed in a red dress. She shone with a golden light that mixed with Guertena's hand. As the white light immersed her vision, she saw faintly them walking away, and heard Guertena say:

"Come, my light. We have much to do."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_**EPILOGUE**_

Cassia found herself sitting on a bench in the middle of a bustling room. Sculptures surrounded her and the light that illuminated the room was from bulbs and not the magical white portal. She blinked once, twice, and realized that she was back where she started, with her sketchbook open on her lap and a pencil in one hand. She looked next to her hoping to see that Adrian was still there, but her heart sank when she saw that the seat next to her was cold and empty. Her heart ached as she got up and gathered her stuff into her bag, pulling her coat on over her shoulders. She'd forgotten hat when she ran off from where Adrian was, she'd left her coat there. _It's funny how life works like that, _she thought.

"Cassia!" a voice cried out from behind her, and as she turned towards it, a tiny form crashed into her, squeezing her around her waist. Holly's golden curls bounced up and down as she giggled with excitement. Behind her came Garry, who gave her a knowing smile which Cassia returned, and Belle, who was holding Garry's left hand. She had color in her face and cheeks and looked more human somehow then she had before. Toby poked his head out from behind Garry and Ib ran to catch up with them.

"Hey guys," Cassia's grin was wide and happy. She rumpled Holly's hair and detached her little arms from her torso so she could walk over and greet the others. "Long time no see."

"I'm glad to see you made it in one piece," Garry's lightened spirit was infectious. "I was worried you'd been left behind."

"You can't get rid of me that easily," she laced her arm through his elbow and put her free hand inside her pocket. She felt something unusual and delicate inside, and when she drew her hand out and opened her palm, she gave a tiny gasp. On the open face of her palm was a perfect purple petal, untouched by the world. Thoughts of Adrian flooded her mind, and all she could think about in that moment was: _Remember me. _

_I'll never forget, _she thought.

Garry looked down at her hand and said, "How peculiar."

"Well come on then," Ib grabbed Garry's coat and pulled him towards the main hallway, which caused him to pull Cassia which caused her to pull Holly who pulled Toby who pulled Belle until they were all stumbling to catch up to her quick steps. "We have a new house to go scope out!"

"Yeah, and if I spend another moment in this gallery, I may faint," Belle interjected.

And there, under the light of the afternoon that shone through the windows of the Guertena Gallery, the story of the four saviors of the gallery and the two gallery alumni came to a close, and with only the future as their foe, they made their way down the steps of the gallery and off to begin their new story. One that could never be changed by a coincidental stumble into a painting.


	23. Afterword From x-LiveFantasy-x

**As The Four comes to a close, I can't thank my fans and followers and reviewers enough. I feel like I can really rely on you all for good feedback and awesome criticism. It's all in the name of writing, right? I still can't believe I'm finally done. It seems like just yesterday I was making characters and doing a story plot for this and my sister thought I was a moron for trying to tackle a project this big. This has been by largest project of the year, and I'm hoping to tackle something even bigger in the future: a sequel. Yes folks, I'm definitely making at least one other part to this story, because there is still some unfinished business I must attend to. It seems like I wrapped everything up at the end, but did I really? I already feel the gears turning! But a fifteen year old girl can only do so much at once, and I feel like I need a break for a while. You might not see too much from me in the coming weeks or even months, but don't you dare forget about me! I'll just be chilling down here in South Jersey, trying to cope with my normal life in addition to my author life. I'm looking forward to my trip to New York City in November, which will be amazingly cool! I feel like now that I'm done, a weight is going to lift off my shoulders… or another weight might be put on. We'll just have to see. So anyways, kisses to you all. MTFBWYA. Don't trust ducks. Oh look at me, just drabbling on. I'll just leave it at that. **

**See you on the flip side!**

**Ciao for now,**

**x-LiveFantasy-x**


	24. LOOK FOR THE SEQUEL!

**THE SEQUAL IS HERE!**

**Look around for **_**The Seven **_**and read the next installment to your heart's content!**

**Also, look for my other fanfiction for Corpse Party called **_**Death and All His Friends!**_

**Read and review! Your long wait has finally come to an end!**

**Arrivederci,**

**x-LiveFantasy-x**


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